(7 


WILLIAM    RADAM. 


MICROBES 


AND 


THE  MICROBE   KILLER 


BY 

WILLIAM   RADAM 

DISCOVERER   OF   THE   "  MICROBE    KILLER  ' 


NEW  YORK 

PUBLISHED    BY   THE   AUTHOR 
1890 


COPYRIGHT   BY 

WILLIAM   RADAM 
1890 


•Cbc  Itntcherbocher  press,  "Hew  J 

Electrotyped,  Printed,  and  Bbund  by 
G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 


PREFACE. 


No  apology  is  needed  for  the  appearance  of  this  volume. 
The  contents  are  unique.  The  theory  I  set  forth  is  new, 
but  the  proofs  of  its  truth  are  forceful.  The  discovery  I 
tell  of  is  fateful  to  many  interests — for  good  to  those  of  the 
people,  for  evil  undoubtedly  to  those  of  pretenders  and 
others  who  have  so  long  depended  on  public  ignorance  to 
profit  by  public  credulity. 

The  object  I  have  in  view  is  very  plain,  and  can  be  readily 
defined.  Circumstances  of  my  early  life  placed  me  in  close 
commune  with  Nature.  I  studied  her  ways  and  observed 
her  laws,  not  thinking  at  the  time  that  the  lessons  learned 
amid  some  of  the  most  beautiful  adornments  of  this  world 
would  ultimately  lead  to  consequences  of  vast  personal 
importance  to  myself.  Business  considerations  first  set  me 
on  the  path,  a  tasteful  interest  held  me  to  it  with  steadfast 
care,  and  the  prospect  of  a  brilliant  discovery  in  the  remote 
distance  gave  me  energy  and  zeal  to  progress  towards  what 
seemed  to  be  a  goal  that  promised  an  enduring  benefit  to 
the  whole  cause  of  humanity. 

I  attained  to  it  after  long  and  careful  experiments,  and  I 
have  held  to  it  despite  the  wildest  efforts  of  jealous  rivals  or 
fearful  opponents  to  displace  me. 

Many  men,  among  them  some  of  the  most  prominent  in 
the  field  of  science,  elaborate  a  theory  and  then  work  with 
one  end  in  view  till  they  establish  it,  or  think  they  establish 
it.  My  methods  were  not  of  that  character.  I  fashioned 


IV  PREFACE. 

no  hypothesis.  I  did  not  look  for  something  previously 
outlined  in  the  mind.  I  simply  studied  and  investigated, 
and  the  light  at  length  broke  in  upon  me,  and  opened  out  a 
discovery  that  I  at  once  recognized  as  being  of  the  utmost 
interest  and  importance.  I  tested  its  value,  and  found 
nothing  wanting.  It  withstood  the  severest  trial,  and  main- 
tained itself  under  all  circumstances.  It  promised  to  reform 
existing  methods  in  the  treatment  of  disease,  to  expose  the 
errors  that  have  been  for  centuries  in  vogue,  to  simplify 
human  knowledge  in  fields  of  vital  moment  to  the  health 
and  welfare  of  my  fellow-men.  Sweeping  in  its  influence  it 
was  simple  in  its  nature,  and  calculated  to  wipe  out  all  the 
complexities  of  hygienic  and  curative  principles  by  its  one- 
ness and  intensity. 

If  I  had  withheld  it,  I  should  justly  have  exposed  myself 
to  condemnation,  and  might,  with  equal  propriety,  have  been 
called  upon  to  justify  my  conduct ;  to  make  it  known  is, 
therefore,  a  duty  which  I  owe  to  myself,  and  yet  more 
to  the  people  who  must  be  benefited  by  my  work. 

Ill-health  had  long  held  me  in  its  toils.  Every  curative 
resource  known  to  medical  science  had  failed  to  afford  me 
relief.  My  condition  was  growing  worse,  and  hope  was  well 
nigh  abandoned,  when,  in  the  line  of  my  life-long  studies, 
I  found  something  that  did  what  physicians  and  their 
materia  medica  had  not  done.  I  applied  to  my  own  case 
principles  which  I  had  learned  were  those  of  Nature  herself, 
and  they  profited  me  where  art  had  not  availed.  As  soon 
as  this  result  was  realized,  and  I  had  leisure  to  weigh  the 
full  force  of  my  discovery,  I  began  to  look  backward,  and  to 
reason  from  the  results  of  my  experience  back  to  first 
causes.  My  sufferings  had  been  complex,  my  ailments  had 
been  various,  and,  according  to  medical  theory,  very  different 
in  origin  and  kind.  But  one  form  of  treatment  cured  me, 
and  the  inference  was  inevitable  that,  if  one  method  sufficed 
for  a  few  diseases,  it  would  probably  suffice  for  more,  and 
possibly  for  all.  I  recalled  the  drift  of  my  inquiries  and  of 
my  knowledge  in  the  plant  world,  and  formulated  the  idea 


PREFACE.  V 

that  all  disease  might  perhaps  be  the  consequence  of  a  single 
cause.  Following  up  this  train  of  thought,  I  had  no  diffi- 
culty, in  course  of  time,  in  strengthening  the  theory  by 
practical  experiment.  By  observation  and  inquiry,  I  soon 
had  the  soundness  of  the  suggestion  sufficiently  established 
to  carry  conviction  to  any  unprejudiced  mind.  But  more 
was  needed.  If  all  diseases  are  traceable  to  one  cause,  all 
should  alike  yield  to  one  mode  of  treatment.  Of  the  truth 
of  the  former  I  had  no  doubt,  but  the  latter  could  only  be 
proved  by  experiment,  and  by  satisfactory  results  ensuing 
from  actual  trial.  The  opportunity  for  this  soon  came.  The 
remarkable  fact  that  I,  a  chronic  invalid,  abandoned  by  the 
doctors  because  unrelieved  by  any  of  their  medicaments, 
had  cured  myself,  speedily  became  known  abroad  among  my 
neighbors  and  friends,  and  some  of  them  came  to  learn 
whether  I  could  do  for  them  what  I  had  done  already,  so 
well,  for  myself.  Thus  was  I  afforded  the  chance  I  sought. 
I  cautiously  gave  them  the  benefit  of  my  discovery,  and  with 
only  one  uniform  result.  All  were  cured. 

My  position  was  made  at  once  impregnable.  My  knowl- 
edge of  Nature's  laws  had  served  me  in  a  dire  extremity. 
The  experience  so  gained  had  led  me  to  outline  a  theory 
which  reason  convinced  me  was  correct,  and  finally  that 
theory  had  been  established  by  incontrovertible  testimony, 
in  the  course  of  which  no  flaw  or  error  could  be  detected. 

There  now  remained  but  one  thing  of  much  weight  to  be 
decided.  It  was  apparent  that  I  held  at  my  disposal  a  dis- 
covery of  no  small  importance  and  value.  Should  I  reserve 
it  to  myself,  or  give  it  to  the  public  ?  Either  course  pre- 
sented a  difficulty.  If  I  retained  it  I  should  lay  myself  open 
very  justly  to  the  charge  of  withholding  something  replete 
with  advantage  to  mankind,  and  if  I  should  publish  it  such 
a  fundamental  upturning  of  all  existing  methods  and  prac- 
tices in  medical  science  would  follow  that  I  must  be  pre- 
pared to  encounter  violent  antagonism,  and  to  defend  myself 
against  the  disciples  of  a  system  that  had  a  record  of  ages  to 
sustain  it. 


VI  PREFACE. 

If  nothing  else,  a  sense  of  duty  to  others  must  alone  have 
speedily  solved  that  question.  I  certainly  had  no  right  to 
retain  an  exclusive  knowledge  of  any  thing  calculated  to 
benefit  others,  and  neither  had  I  any  right  to  allow  some 
personal  inconveniences  to  stand  in  the  way  of  such  a  course. 
My  resolution  was  accordingly  soon  made.  I  extended  the 
operations  of  my  discovery  so  as  to  leave  no  possible  room 
for  doubt  as  to  its  universal  application,  and  then  I  deter- 
mined to  submit  the  whole  case  to  the  public. 

This  book  is  the  consequence  of  that  resolve.  In  its  pages 
I  have  given  .a  detailed  statement  of  the  new  discovery 
which  points  to  a  unity  in  the  cause  and  treatment  of 
disease.  From  day  to  day  steps  are  being  made  by  advo- 
cates of  the  old  theories  which  advance  them  slowly  in  the 
direction  I  have  taken.  Intermittent  fever,  cholera,  scarlet- 
fever,  influenza,  and  the  recently  named  "  Grippe,"  as  well 
as  other  diseases,  are  acknowledged  due  to  the  presence  of 
microbes,  but  the  time  will  come  when  the  people  must  free 
themselves  from  the  bondage  of  ignorance  now  urged  upon 
them,  to  accept  the  undoubted  fact  that  all  disease  is  due  to 
the  same  cause,  and  that  treatment  to  be  beneficial  must  be 
directed  to  the  single  object  of  stopping  fermentation  in  the 
system  by  destroying  the  micro-organisms  that  give  rise  to 
it.  This  is  no  longer  a  theory  subject  to  refutation  or  need- 
ing proof.  In  the  subsequent  pages  I  have  endeavored  to 
bring  it  within  the  grasp  of  the  most  superficial  reader,  but 
I  have  also  furnished  irrefutable  testimony  to  its  truth  and 
stability.  It  is  not  an  hypothesis  but  a  demonstrated  law, 
and  its  reality  is  well  fixed  by  practical  experiment  and  by 
the  evidence  of  accomplished  facts. 

The  subject  is  of  interest  not  only  to  a  few,  but  to  the 
many ;  to  everybody  in  fact  who  may  be  subject  to  disease 
or  ailments  of  any  kind.  It  promises  relief  where  cures  have 
hitherto  been  deemed  impossible,  and  it  places  the  sick  and 
ailing  in  a  position  where  they  shall  be  free  from  the 
expense  and  uncertainty  of  customary  methods,  and  able  to 
follow  out  the  only  known  rational  treatment  for  themselves. 


PREFACE.  Vl'i 

I  do  not  expect  to  be  exempt  from  criticism.  On  the 
contrary,  I  invite  inquiry  and  examination  in  a  spirit  of  hon- 
est impartiality.  Physicians  will  probably  act  under  the 
customary  impulse  of  doubting,  possibly  of  condemning, 
until  my  remedy  shall  have  been  subjected  by  them  to  the 
full  light  of  actual  test, — and  that  I  solicit.  At  the  same 
time  it  is  but  just  alike  to  myself  and  to  the  profession  of 
medicine,  to  add  that  many  members  among  the  most  pro- 
gressive in  that  profession  have  already  accepted  my  teach- 
ing and  availed  themselves  of  my  disc9very. 

Thus  far,  no  explanation  or  statement  of  it  has  been 
given  to  the  world  except  in  brief  notices  and  superficial 
sketches  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  have  displayed  an 
interest  in  the  subject.  This  book  was  therefore  necessary. 
It  could  not  have  been  omitted,  neither  should  it  be  delayed. 
It  is  a  challenge  to  the  world  of  science,  and  a  help,  perhaps 
even  it  may  be  a  salvation,  to  the  sick.  It  will  be  a  revela- 
tion and  a  source  of  instruction  to  all.  It  will  work  a  reform 
in  the  treatment  of  disease,  and  a  commotion  among  the 
disciples  of  antiquated  teachings.  I  understand  its  force, 
and  can  estimate  its  influence.  I  realize  already  the  criti- 
cisms that  it  must  encounter;  but  I  ask  for  it  a  careful 
perusal  and  can  wait  with  equanimity  for  the  time  near  at 
hand  when  it  will  receive  the  approval  and  indorsement  of 
every  impartial  reader. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

PREFACE iil 

I. — INTRODUCTION I 

II. EFFECTS  OF  CLIMATE 12 

III. THE  CAUSE  OF  DISEASE 23 

IV. — INOCULATION  AS  A  PROPHYLACTIC      ....         39 

V. HABITAT  OF  DISEASE  GERMS 46 

VI. — FAILURE  OF  MEDICAL  SCIENCE 54 

VII. PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES     .  .         ",  .  .  .67 

VIII. DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE   MICROBE   KILLER — MY   FIRST 

PATIENTS .86 

IX. — HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY  .  .  .       105 

X. — HOW  TO  CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE         .  .138 

XI. CURABILITY  OF  TUBERCLE  AND  CONSUMPTION  .  .       1 66 

XII. THE  MICROBE  KILLER  IN  LEPROSY       .  .  .  .182 

XIII. HOW  TO  USE  THE  MICROBE  KILLER     ....       198 

ix 


CONTENTS   OF  APPENDIX, 


PAGE 

XIV. "LA  GRIPPE  "  AND  THE  MICROBE  KILLER.            .            .  208 

XV. — PEDIGREE  OF  MICROBES,  AND  SUMMARY      .  .  .Zip 

APPENDIX. 

CONCERNING  THE  PLATES 233 

NOTE 234 

THE  RELATION  OF  MICROBES  TO  DISEASE        ...        .        .        .  234 

PROOF  OF  THE  RELATION  OF  MICROBES  TO  DISEASE        .        .        .  243 

DISEASE  MICROBES  EEVRYWHERE 245 

DISINFECTION 254 

BENIGNANT  MICROBES     . 265 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  DRUGS  ON  MICROBES  IN  THE  INTESTINE    .        .  266 

DISEASE  OF  THE  NIPPLE  DUE  TO  MICROBES 267 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  MICROBES  IN  MALARIAL  FEVER   .        .         .  269 

THE  MICROBE  OF  TUMORS 270 

THE  CAUSE  OF  BALDNESS  ALSO  A  MICROBE      .....  270 

A  MICROBE  THE  CAUSE  OF  CONSUMPTION 271 

To  PREVENT  THE  SPREAD  OF  CONSUMPTION     .        .        -.        .        .  275 

A  PAPER  ON  THE  TREATMENT  OF  CONSUMPTION      ....  276 

CREASOTE  IN  PHTHISIS  AND  TUBERCULOSIS 281 

PROTECTION  AGAINST  MICROBES 281 

THE  MICROBE  IN  CANCER 283 

M.  PASTEUR  ON  HYDROPHOBIA 287 

PREVENTION  OF  RABIES  AT  Rio  JANEIRO         .....  298 

TREATMENT  OF  RABIES  AT  THE  PASTEUR  INSTITUTE        .        .        .  298 

FRESH  AIR  IN  CONSUMPTION 300 

THE  MICROBE  OF  INFLUENZA 301 

"  LA  GRIPPE  "  IN  AMERICA 306 

LEPROSY 313 

VALUE  OF  MILK  ANALYSIS •  .        .  322 

NECESSARY  QUALITIES  IN  A  STOVE 323 

ANIMAL  PARASITES 424 

YELLOW  FEVER 335 

DOES  SALTING  MEAT  DESTROY  MICROBES  ? 351 

AN  ESSAY  ON  INFLUENZA  FROM  INDIA     ......  352 

THE  EDUCATIONAL  POVERTY  OF  PHYSICIANS 353 

A  DOCTOR'S  CRITICISM 358 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PACK 

WILLIAM  RADAM   .......         Frontispiece 

MICROBES  IN  STALE  MEAT        .......  l8 

FUNGUS  AND  MICROBES  ON  DECAYING  POTATOES   .            .            .  l8 

RUST  ON  ROSE  LEAVES  ...                        ....  22 

FUNGI  AND  SPORES  FROM  CLOTHING        .  .  .  .  .22 

PNEUMONIA    ..........  28 

SCARLET  FEVER 28 

MICROBES  IN  A  STALE  EGG      .  .  .  .  .  .  -31 

MICROBES  IN  A  STALE  SAUSAGE 31 

FRESH  VACCINE  VIRUS 40 

VACCINE  VIRUS  (OLD)     .            .            ...            .  40 

CELLS  OF  THE  YEAST  PLANT              .            .            .            .            .  51 

SPORES  OF  FUNGUS  ON  A  RIPE  ORANGE              .  51 

SPORES  AND  FUNGI  ON  BREAD           ....  53 

FUNGUS  ON  A  RIPE  STRAWBERRY  '   .  -53 

SCROFULA  POSTULES 6 1 

TUBERCLE.       (PARIS) 6 1 

CANCER FROM  THE  PANCREAS      ...  66 

CANCER  OF  THE  BREAST.       (PARIS) 66 

WM.  RADAM  BEFORE  TREATMENT               .....  72 

GASTRITIS 72 

CONGESTION  OF  MUCOUS  MEMBRANE  OF  STOMACH                          .  74 

MICROBES  FROM  THE  STOMACH         ......  74 


Xll  ILL  US  TRA  TIONS. 

BACILLUS  ANTHRACIS  IN  LUNG.       (PARIS)  80 

BACILLUS  ANTHRACIS,  CULT*D.       (BERLIN)  80 

FROM  A  TUMOR.       (CANCER  ?)  .  .  .  .  .  .84 

MICROBES  IN  TUMOR 84 

MICROBES  IN  SOUR  MILK 88 

HUMAN  BLOOD  CORPUSCLES 88 

CAVITIES  IN  LUNG  .  .  .  .  .  .    •  -94 

TUBERCLE — CAVITVT  IN  LUNG.       (PARIS)  ....          94 

CONSUMPTION. MICROBES  IN  VOMITED  MATTER    ...         96 

CONSUMPTION 96 

HEADQUARTERS,  813  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK    .  .  .       103 

INTERIOR    OF    OFFICE    OF    WM.    RADAM,    813    FIFTH    AVENUE, 

NEW   YORK       .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .       104 

PILES. MICROBES  FROM  RECTUM  .          - Io6 

GANGRENE 106 

CARBUNCLE  ON  THE  NECK      .  .  .  ...  .112 

BACILLUS  ANTHRACIS CULT*D.       (BERLIN)    .  .  .  .112 

CANCER 126 

DROP  OF  FERMENT  FROM  A  CANCER  GROWTH         .         .         .126 

BRIGHT'S  DISEASE  OF  KIDNEY.     (PARIS)        ...        .        .  133 

MICROBES  FROM  THE  KIDNEY 133 

CHOLERA  MORBUS.     (BERLIN)       .        .        .        .        .  137 

BACILLUS  ANTHRACIS  IN  LUNG.     (BERLIN)    ....  137 

CATARRH  OF  UTERUS .  143 

COMMON  CATARRH 143 

DIPHTHERIA 149 

FROM  ENLARGED  TONSILS.     (PARIS)      .....  149 

SYPHILIS  (?)  .        .        . 155 

BUBO. — SYPHILITIC  ULCERATION 155 

M.  C.  BATTEY.     CURED  BY  MICROBE  KILLER  ....  163 

MICROBES  FROM  ULCER.  (M.  C.  BATTEY)  ....  165 
FROM  ABSCESS  ON  THE  BACK  OF  A  LADY  ....  165 
TUBERCLES — CLEAN  CULTURE.  (BERLIN)  .  .  .  .170 
TUBERCLE CAVITY.  (PARIS) 170 


ILL  US  TRA  TIONS.  XI  i  1 

NEPHRITIS    . 176 

NEPHRITIS 176 

LEPER.      (AUSSATZ).      JAMES    KAVANAUGH,    ALGIERS,    LA. 
FROM  PHOTOGRAPH  BY  LILIENTHAL,  137  CANAL  STREET, 

NEW  ORLEANS        .                        190 

LEPRA. — SKIN  SHOWING  MICROBES.     (BERLIN)      .        .        .  193 

LEPROSY. — FROM  JAMES  KAVANAUGH    .....  193 

PECULIAR  SKIN  DISEASE.     (NEW  ORLEANS)    ....  196 

SKIN  DISEASE  IN  NEW  ORLEANS 196 

BACTERIA.     (BERLIN) 200 

NAILERS'  CONSUMPTION 200 

FATTY  DEGENERATION  OF  KIDNEY.     (PARIS)         .         .         .  204 

CHRONIC  CYSTITIS 204 

ECZEMA 217 

MICROBES  FROM  OPHTHALMIA 217 

MICROBES  FROM  A  HOLLOW  TOOTH 22O 

MICROBES  FROM  THE  TEETH.     INFLAMED  GUMS     .         .         .  22O 
SINGLE  TRICHINA  SPIRALIS  IN  FLESH.     (MAGNIFIED  WITH  \ 

INCH  OBJECTIVE) 231 

TRICHINA  SPIRALIS 231 


MICROBES. 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

IF  we  attempt  to  trace  back  any  great  element  of  knowl- 
edge to  its  primary  source,  we  find  ourselves  inevitably  led 
up  to  Nature.  Not  the  Sciences  only,  but  the  Arts,  the 
appliances,  aids,  and  engines  of  modern  civilization,  the 
devices  of  Humanity,  the  weapons  with  which  natural  forces 
themselves  are  overcome,  and  by  which  wondrous  powers 
are  controlled  and  utilized,  are  but  the  outcome  of  knowl- 
edge that  sprang  from  intricate  causes  in  the  material  world 
around  us,  and  which  experiment  and  experience  have  put 
into  practical  form. 

A  great  book  of  revelation  has  lain  open  before  the 
human  intellect  at  all  times  and  throughout  all  ages,  which, 
if  properly  studied,  contains  the  germ  of  all  knowledge.  Its 
pages  are  the  blue  skies  and  the  green  fields ;  they  are  seen 
in  the  rocks  and  the  oceans,  in  the  rivers  and  the  rain,  in 
the  air  and  the  clouds,  in  the  sunshine  and  the  darkness.  In 
Nature's  laws  we  have  guides  that  put  us  on  our  way  and 
indicate  the  course  that  must  be  pursued  if  any  useful  goal 
is  to  be  attained.  We  have  enough  within  the  scope  of 
vision  not  only  to  explain  the  phenomena  of  life,  but  to 
bring  within  our  comprehension  the  first  steps  in  human 
progress  and  the  incentives  that  stimulate  the  life  and 
energies  of  man. 


MICROBES. 


Not  this  only,  but  amid  the  refinements  of  human  knowl- 
edge at  this  day,  if  we  would  probe  farther  into  the 
mysteries  that  even  yet  surround  us,  and  ever  will,  we  must, 
if  we  are  wise,  take  our  first  lesson  at  Nature's  hand. 
Even  the  mechanical  inventor,  the  engineer,  the  architect, 
far  as  their  calling  seems  to  be  removed  from  Natural 
Science,  must  often  unwittingly  fall  back  on  first  principles 
and  be  forced  to  acknowledge  that  Nature  has  been  before 
them  in  the  field.  The  steam-engine  is  but  a  machine  where 
fuel  is  transformed  into  power,  and  the  human  body  is  but  a 
like  device  only  vastly  more  perfect, — one,  that  is  to  say,  in 
which  greater  results  are  obtained  from  smaller  causes,  and 
which  in  truth  forms  the  standard  to  which  men  still  are 
aiming  in  the  workshop  and  the  laboratory.  Insects  afford 
to  the  mechanician  examples  of  the  power  which  he  fails  to 
rival,  but  which  he  seeks  to  imitate  and  in  which  he  learns  a 
lesson.  The  human  eye  is  repeated  in  the  telescope  and  the 
microscope,  the  stereoscope  plays  upon  the  phenomena  of 
double  vision,  the  familiar  zoetrope  takes  advantage  of  the 
duration  of  impression  on  the  optic  nerve,  and  the  phono- 
graph reproduces  the  atmosphere's  vibrations  and  those  of 
the  mechanism  of  the  organ  of  hearing. 

But  simple  as  the  problem  seems  to  be  when  we  say  that 
Nature,  as  a  teacher  with  an  open  book  before  her,  is  ready 
to  be  our  guide, — simple  as  it  seems  to  be  to  follow  the 
instructions  put  before  us,  the  cost  and  the  trouble  are  great 
when  success  is  to  be  attained.  We  are  apt  to  think  that 
man  in  this  nineteenth  century  has  arrived  at  a  high  degree 
of  civilization.  So  perhaps  he  has,  but  it  is  only  relative. 
The  possibilities  of  the  future  cannot  be  divined.  Yet  the 
expenditure  of  human  energy  necessary  to  bring  about  even 
the  present  condition  of  the  race  has  been  enormous,  some- 
thing beyond  computation,  beyond,  indeed,  any  thing  that 
the  mind  can  realize.  Sometimes  we  hear  of  great  discov- 
eries being  stumbled  over  unexpectedly,  but  such  stories  are 
too  often  fiction.  A  pretty  tale  was  told  of  Sir  Isaac  New- 
ton, but  it  was  mythical,  and  the  laws  of  gravitation  were 


INTRODUCTION. 


the  result  of  prodigious  mental  labor  and  research.  Darwin 
did  not  formulate  the  theory  of  evolution  and  the  origin  of 
the  species  till  after  years  of  observation  and  earnest  toil. 
James  Watt,  at  much  cost  of  labor,  thought,  and  time,  built 
the  steam-engine,  but  it  has  taken  years  of  earnest  endeavor 
and  thousands  of  able  men  to  bring  it  to  that  degree  of  per- 
fection which  places  us  within  a  few  days'  reach  of  the  Old 
World.  Twenty-four  hundred  years  ago,  when  ancient  Rome 
was  but  a  village,  hardly  older  than  is  this  Republic,  Thales 
discovered  electricity.  Benjamin  Franklin  drew  it  from  the 
clouds,  and  a  century  has  passe^l  since  Galvani  saw  its  rela- 
tion to  the  human  body.  A  generation  that  has  gone 
remembered  the  electric  light  and  the  principle  of  the  tele- 
graph as  playthings  for  students,  but  it  is  only  now  that  we 
have  attained  to  any  thing  like  a  conception  of  the  powers 
and  uses  of  this  unseen  but  universal  force,  still  less  had  it 
until  recently  been  brought  under  man's  control.  Even  now 
its  full  capabilities  are  unknown,  and  its  nature  is  only  in 
part  comprehended  by  philosophers  and  not  at  all  even  by 
those  who  handle  it  most  frequently.  Yet  it  is  serving  us 
day  and  night,  aiding  the  operations  of  commerce,  facilitat- 
ing trade,  contributing  to  our  comfort  and  convenience, 
protecting  our  houses,  lighting  our  ships,  and  adding  to  the 
machinery  of  war  as  well  as  of  peace.  But  all  is  the  result  of 
a  vast  expenditure  of  mental  power,  and  all  has  come  about 
from  a  beginning  that  finds  its  place  in  Nature. 

So  in  like  manner  the  natural  properties  of  air  and  water 
have  been  made  subservient  to  human  wants.  The  elasticity 
of  the  one  is  equally  applicable  to  check  the  recoil  of  great 
guns,  to  stop  our  trains,  to  fire  a  bullet,  or  to  close  a  door ; 
while  the  unyielding  resistance  of  the  other  raises  elevators, 
compresses  merchandise,  launches  ships,  assists  the  engineer 
in  his  grandest  works,  and  is  applicable  to  numberless  uses 
that  go  almost  unnoticed  in  every-day  life.  But  again  lives 
have  fallen,  energies  have  been  exhausted,  and  numberless 
experiments  have  been  gone  through  before  these  results 
could  be  attained. 


MICROBES. 


The  action  of  Nature  is  unceasing.  There  is  no  such  thing 
as  rest. 

There  is  no  Death  !     The  dust  we  tread 
Shall  change  beneath  the  summer  shower 

To  golden  grain  or  mellow  fruit, 
Or  rainbow-tinted  flower. 

The  granite  rocks  disorganize 

To  feed  the  hanging  moss  they  bear,  . 

The  forest  trees  drink  daily  life 

From  out  the  viewless  air. 

There  is  no  Death  !     The  leaves  may  fall, 

The  flowers  may  fade  and  pass  away  ; 
They  only  wait  through  wintry  hours 

For  coming  of  the  May. 

There  is  no  Death !     An  angel  form 

Walks  o'er  the  earth  with  silent  tread  ; 
He  bears  our  best-loved  things  away, 

And  then — we  call  them  dead. 

Ceaseless  energy  is  everywhere  apparent.  Let  the  mind 
sweep  for  a  moment  through  the  boundless  realms  of  space ; 
all  is  motion.  An  infinity  of  worlds  is  circling  with  incon- 
ceivable velocity  under  unerring  laws  through  every  region 
in  the  boundless  universe,  and  intervening  space  is  quivering 
with  the  invisible  influences  of  light,  heat,  electricity,  and 
gravitation.  There  is  no  rest. 

Look  again  with  the  eye  of  Science  into  the  inmost  com- 
position of  a  piece  of  metal,  and  what  do  we  see  ?  Myriads 
upon  myriads  of  indivisible  atoms  separated  from  each 
other  in  a  never-ending,  never-dying  state  of  rapid  vibra- 
tion ;  of  extreme  susceptibility  to  the  faintest  influence  of 
heat  or  magnetism,  bound  into  close  proximity  by  an 
inconceivable  force,  but  ready  to  enter  into  new  conditions 
whenever  the  circumstances  are  favorable. 

And  as  there  is  no  rest,  so  there  is  no  destruction.  With 
all  the  changes  that  are  going  on  in  consequence  of  the  rest- 
less energy  of  man  and  the  unceasing  operations  of  Nature, 
the  amount  of  matter  on  this  globe  is  hardly  different  from 
what  it  was  thousands  of  ages  ago,  when  fern  forests  covered 


INTRODUCTION.  5 


the  earth  or  Tangles  flourished  alone  in  the  hot,  damp 
atmosphere  that  surrounded  primordial  life,  when  skulless 
creatures  monopolized  the  waters  and  before  the  first  land 
animals  had  appeared. 

Matter  is  never  destroyed.  Forms  may  change,  but  that 
is  all.  The  candle  burns  and  it  ceases  to  exist,  but  it  has 
only  been  altered.  The  material  is  there.  The  carbon  and 
the  hydrogen  have  made  new  combinations  and  have  gone 
away  into  space.  Heat  and  electricity  were  developed  during 
the  change,  but  nothing  is  lost ;  nothing  is  destroyed. 

"  Earth  that  nourished  thee  shall  claim 
Thy  growth,  to  be  resolved  to  earth  again, 
And,  lost  each  human  trace,  surrendering  up 
Thine  individual  being  shalt  thou  go 
To  mix  forever  with  the  elements, 
To  be  a  brother  to  the  insensible  rock 
And  to  the  sluggish  clod,  which  the  rude  swain 
Turns  with  his  share  and  treads  upon.     The  oak 
Shall  send  his  roots  abroad  and  pierce  thy  mould." 

We  do  not  know  what  life  is.  We  cannot  confidently 
define  its  origin.  We  are  unable  to  say  with  certainty  how 
Nature  begins  her  work,  but  we  can  see  how  she  proceeds 
after  she  has  begun.  We  dare  not  affirm  positively  what 
produces  the  monera,  but  we  can  trace  the  growth  of  cells, 
the  assimilation  of  food,  and  the  processes  by  which  Nature 
carries  out  her  never-ceasing  law  of  change.  For  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  functions  attendant  upon  the  presence  of 
life,  the  imbibition  of  new  matter  is  constantly  necessary, 
and  with  it  the  exudation  of  the  old  tissues  and  of  the  refuse, 
as  it  were,  left  after  a  process  of  chemical  combinations,  is 
equally  essential.  The  complex  action  of  glandular  organs, 
the  means  by  which  various  chemical  processes  are  brought 
about  and  perfected,  are  among  the  things  which  Science 
has  not  yet  taught  us,  but  we  have  advanced  to  the  point 
where  organic  compounds  may  be  produced  in  the  labora- 
tory, and  it  is  impossible  to  say  how  far  that  step  on  an 
entirely  new  road  may  take  us.  The  manufacture  of  salicin 
is  one  of  the  best-known  illustrations  of  this. 


MICROBES. 


Organic  bodies  are  adapted  to  the  conditions  that  sur- 
round them.  Reference  is  made  particularly  to  conditions 
of  atmosphere,  temperature,  and  moisture.  The  vegetation 
of  the  tropics  is  vastly  different  from  that  in  northern  lati- 
tudes, and  marine  and  aquatic  plants  differ  in  construction 
from  those  which  flourish  in  the  air  as  much  as  fishes  differ 
from  the  amphibia.  In  both  the  animal  and  the  vegetable 
kingdoms  again,  parasites  exist  in  the  utmost  variety  of  form 
and  in  the  greatest  number,  plants  passing  through  the 
whole  course  of  their  existence  on  other  plants,  and  both 
vegetable  and  animal  formations  preying  upon  the  highest 
forms  of  organic  life.  No  observant  person  can  fail  to  see 
examples  of  this,  for  they  are  before  him  at  every  turn. 
Many  of  these  are  direct  descendants  from  the  first  forms  of 
vegetable  life  that  appeared  upon  the  earth.  The  well- 
known  and  popular  mistletoe  is  but  a  parasite  like  the 
lichens  that  give  color  to  the  bark  of  old  or  unhealthy  trees, 
or  the  mildew  that  in  wet  seasons  dims  the  beauty  of  the 
lilac  leaves.  Some  are  absolutely  microscopical,  not  visible 
to  the  naked  vision,  appearing  as  discolorations  only  under 
a  low  power,  but  developing  into  well-formed  organisms 
when  submitted  to  the  eye  through  the  medium  of  high 
magnifying  instruments. 

The  distinctions  between  animal  and  vegetable  life  have  at 
no  time  been  well  defined,  and  recent  investigations  into  the 
causes  of  disease  and  into  the  nature  of  the  simplest  organic 
forms  render  the  possibility  of  such  distinction  more  difficult 
than  ever. 

Both  organic  worlds  have  the  same  origin.  The  primitive 
organism  probably  branched  off  into  three,  one  leading  on- 
wards to  animal  life,  another  to  vegetables,  and  the  third  to 
a  neutral  formation,  some  members  of  which  are  more 
nearly  allied  to  plants  and  some  to  animals.  This  division 
is  found  chiefly  in  the  waters,  both  saline  and  fresh,  but  in 
incalculable  numbers.  Some  of  them  form  the  slime  that  is 
found  in  damp  places,  among  decaying  vegetation  in  the 
humid  atmosphere  of  some  forests,  and  again  forming  the 


INTRODUCTION. 


yellow  discoloration  that  is  often  to  be  seen  in  the  tan  beds. 
Others  still  very  minute  are  covered  with  a  flinty  substance, 
and  when  accumulated  in  masses  they  form  the  peculiar 
kind  of  slate  known  as  Tripoli,  while  again  others  are  nothing 
more  than  floating  particles  of  matter  whose  prime  object 
of  existence  seems  not  to  extend  beyond  a  division  and  sub- 
division into  innumerable  repetitions  of  themselves. 

It  is  more  than  probable  that  in  the  human  body  there 
are  at  all  times  and  under  all  circumstances  myriads  of  these 
minute  organizations.  If  they  be  of  an  inert  character, 
or  limited  in  quantity  in  a  strongly  healthy  person,  their 
presence  may  be  unnoticed.  But  if  the  system  be  weakened, 
or  the  nature  of  the  parasite  be  changed,  or  if  its  numbers 
be  greatly  increased,  disease  and  death  are  the  result. 

A  remarkable  discovery  has  recently  been  made  in  the 
West.  For  some  time  a  disease  has  been  prevalent  among 
cattle,  which  has  been  known  to  farmers  as  the  "  corn-stalk 
disease."  It  appears  that  in  late  autumn  or  winter  cattle 
are  turned  into  fields  of  Indian  corn,  from  which  the  ears 
have  been  removed,  or  which  has  been  "topped,"  to  clean 
up  the  remnants  of  leaves  and  tops.  After  a  few  days  one 
and  another  of  the  cattle  are  taken  ill  with  a  malady  which 
may  cause  death  in  from  twenty-four  hours  to  ten  days.  It 
is  said  to  be  an  acute  blood-poisoning,  with  high  fever.  The 
pulse  is  weak  and  respiration  rapid.  The  animal  sometimes 
bellows,  and  will  chase  other  animals,  or  will  stand  by  itself 
apart  and  be  loth  to  move.  They  drink  and  retain  the  power 
to  swallow.  The  mucous  surfaces  are  congested.  The  secre- 
tion of  milk  slackens  and  ceases.  A  post-mortem  examina- 
tion shows  evidence  of  acute  septic  febrile  disease,  which, 
however,  is  not  contagious. 

At  first  the  malady  puzzled  the  farmers,  who  failed  alto- 
gether to  account  for  it.  Only  certain  fields,  or  parts  of 
fields,  were  dangerous,  but  stock-owners  never  -could  tell 
whether  it  would  be  safe,  or  what  would  be  the  conse- 
quences of  turning  a  herd  into  a  fodder  field.  Various 
theories  were  raised,  but  only  to  be  knocked  down  by  ex- 


8  MICROBES. 


perience.  It  was  thought  to  be  caused  by  lack  of  salt  or 
water,  but  it  was  seen  in  cattle  that  had  both.  The  dryness 
of  the  fodder  was  blamed,  but  without  reason,  as  experi- 
ment showed.  It  was  attributed  to  smut,  a  vegetable  para- 
site known  to  botanists  as  ustilago  maidis,  but  cattle  fed 
with  large  quantities  of  smut  were  not  made  ill.  At  last 
the  growing  corn  was  examined,  and  patches  were  found 
where  the  plants  were  stunted  if  attacked  in  early  summer. 
The  lower  leaves  died,  becoming  yellow,  with  colored  streaks. 
The  roots  were  unhealthy,  and  the  ears  did  not  mature.  Re- 
sort was  had  to  the  microscope,  which  at  once  revealed  the 
presence  of  a  minute  organism  that  is  sufficient  to  account 
for  the  whole  phenomenon.  It  is  a  germ  or  microbe  closely 
resembling  that  of  the  Southern  cattle  plague.  In  shape 
ovoid,  its  length  is  not  more  than  one  sixth  that  of  a  blood 
corpuscle,  and  it  moves  by  a  sort  of  rolling  motion.  These 
organisms  have  been  cultivated  in  media  outside  of  the 
body,  and  the  injection  of  the  cultures  into  animals  has 
produced  symptoms  exactly  resembling  those  of  "corn-stalk 
disease." 

Here  we  have  a  close  connection  between  cause  and  effect, 
and  one  that  is  absolutely  proved  in  both  directions.  We 
trace  disease  back  to  the  microbe,  and  then  producing  the 
microbe  by  artificial  means,  we  are  enabled  in  turn  to  pro- 
duce the  disease.  Nothing  could  be  clearer,  nothing  more 
emphatic. 

It  must,  however,  be  remembered,  that  although  these 
minute  organizations  have  been  studied  so  closely  that  they 
have  been  formed  into  a  separate  kingdom  and  accurately 
classified,  we  have  no  knowledge  as  to  how  many  different 
varieties  of  them  there  may  be.  They  differ  greatly,  but 
when  occupying  the  system  of  the  higher  animals  the  same 
form  always  produces  the  same  disease.  The  microbe  which 
gives  rise  to  the  symptoms  of  the  corn-stalk  disease  is  very 
similar  to  that  which  has  been  identified  in  the  Southern 
cattle  plague.  Whether  they  are  the  same  is  not  yet  ascer- 
tained ;  if  they  are,  the  cattle  plague  is  more  than  probably 


IN  TROD  UCTION. 


caused  by  the  animals  eating  diseased  food.  But  as  the 
symptoms  are  different,  it  is  likely  that  the  microbes  in 
the  two  cases  will  present  some  minute  distinctions  when 
closely  examined,  and  that  the  differences  are  not  due  to 
extraneous  causes,  as  has  sometimes  been  suggested.  This 
is  rendered  more  probable  from  the  fact  that  in  the  West  it 
is  chiefly  horned  cattle  that  are  affected,  while  in  the  South 
pigs  are  seen  to  suffer  most. 

For  just  as  all  animals  have  special  parasites,  so  they  are 
more  or  less  susceptible  to  different  microbes.  For  example, 
the  germ  which  produces  a  certain  disease  in  man  may  not 
necessarily  give  rise  to  a  similar  disease,  or  to  any,  in  a  lower 
animal.  It  does  sometimes,  but  not  invariably.  As  a  rule, 
it  may  be  taken  that  each  disease  has  its  special  germ  ;  and 
again,  although  this  is  given  with  more  reserve,  that  each 
animal  is  distinctively  susceptible  to  special  germs.  A 
horse  may  be  placed  in  proximity  to  horned  cattle  and  not 
be  affected  by  the  disease  from  which  they  are  suffering, 
and  in  like  manner  a  cow  may  be  in  the  same  stable  with  a 
horse  that  is  sick  and  not  be  inconvenienced.  Such  examples 
illustrate  the  rule. 

Among  the  exceptions  may  be  instanced  the  undoubted 
fact  that  glanders  in  a  horse  may  be  conveyed  to  man,  as 
has  frequently  been  attested.  One  of  the  most  recent  illus- 
trations of  this  was  the  case  of  Dr.  Hoffman  of  the  Vienna 
General  Hospital.  That  gentleman  had  been  making  some 
observations  about  the  bacillus  of  glanders,  when,  suffering 
from  a  slight  attack  of  muscular  rheumatism,  he  gave  him- 
self a  hypodermic  injection  of  morphia.  The  syringe  he 
had,  however,  had  been  previously  used  for  inoculation  of 
the  cultures  of  glanders  bacillus,  and  care  had  not  been 
taken  to  cleanse  it.  The  disease  was  thus  conveyed  through 
probably  a  few  only  of  the  microbes  being  left  on  the  instru- 
ment, and  in  less  than  three  weeks  Dr.  Hoffman  died. 

From  all  of  which  it  follows  that  one  species  of  animal 
may  eat  with  impunity  impure  food  which  in  another  species 
of  animal  would  bring  about  disease.  It  will  also  be  under- 


10  MICROBES. 


stood  how  the  cooking  of  food  may  make  it  harmless  simply 
by  destroying  the  vitality  of  the  germ.  This,  nevertheless, 
is  not  to  be  received  as  a  never-failing  protection,  because  it 
has  been  proved  by  experiment  repeatedly  that  the  degree 
of  heat  usually  required  and  used  in  cooking  is  not  sufficient 
to  remove  the  danger,  but,  on  the  contrary,  that  a  high 
degree  of  temperature,  continued  for  a  considerable  time, 
may  be,  and  most  generally  is,  requisite  for  that  purpose. 

Nor  is  it  necessary  that  food  should  be  impure  or  diseased 
before  microbes  or  protista  are  taken  into  the  system.  The 
atmosphere  is  full  of  them.  The  difficulty  of  investigation 
is  great.  Lives  have  been  devoted  to  an  endeavor  to  solve 
the  question  of  spontaneous  generation,  and  many  capable 
observers  are  of  opinion  that  these  germs  may,  under  favor- 
able circumstances,  be  originated,  those  conditions  being 
merely  a  suitable  medium  and  a  steady,  uniform,  and  proper 
temperature.  If  that  theory  be  correct,  it  is  clear  that  no 
precautions  can  be  used  which  will  prevent  the  formation  of 
microbes  in  the  human  system,  and  then  we  must  be  content 
to  destroy  what  we  cannot  prevent.  If  they  are  produced 
spontaneously  we  may  possibly  limit  the  production  by 
changing  the  conditions  necessary  to  their  existence,  but 
the  more  practical  resort  would  be  to  kill  them  after  they 
are  formed,  and  thus  remove  their  power  for  evil. 

But  independently  of  all  this,  they  abound  in  the  at- 
mosphere. We  take  -them  into  the  system  through  the 
lungs.  In  close  rooms,  where  several  persons  are  collected, 
as  in  factories,  workshops,  and  often  in  theatres,  public 
rooms,  law  courts,  churches,  and  in  ill-ventilated  bedrooms, 
they  are  most  abundant,  and  they  increase  with  such 
marvellous  rapidity  that  in  an  hour  a  comparatively  pure 
atmosphere  may  be  converted  into  one  that  is  exceedingly 
unhealthy. 

It  may  be  asked,  that  being  the  case,  why  persons  who 
breathe  in  such  places  are  not  always  struck  down  with  dis- 
ease. Because,  probably,  the  particular  germs  floating  in 
the  air  are  not  such  as  would  give  rise  to  a  particular  com- 


IN  TROD  UCTION. 


II 


plaint  in  man,  but  in  all  such  instances  they  render  the  air 
unhealthy  and  unfit  for  respiration.  In  a  sick-room  it  is 
more  likely  that  they  are  of  the  variety  which  would 
originate  a  given  disease  in  man,  and  then  we  apply  the 
word  infection. 


CHAPTER  II. 

EFFECTS   OF   CLIMATE. 

How  do  these  atmospheric  microbes  come  into  existence  ? 
Some  investigators  still  maintain  that  their  carefully  con- 
ducted experiments  show  the  truth  of  the  theory  of  sponta- 
neous generation.  Many,  especially  in  the  German  schools, 
hold  the  view  that  primitive  organisms,  of  which  more  will 
be  said  in  a  subsequent  chapter,  are  formed  by  means  of  an 
inherent  force  in  matter  drawing  together  the  elements 
which  we  know  to  prevail  in,  indeed  to  constitute,  organic 
forms. 

From  a  strictly  scientific,  or  especially  from  a  biological, 
point  of  view  this  question  is  of  vast  importance,  but  in  the 
present  consideration  it  is  of  less  moment.  We  are  dealing 
not  with  the  origin  of  life,  but  with  the  presence  and 
destruction  of  microbes,  and  can  afford  to  regard  the  more 
abstruse  problem  as  one  of  incidental  interest  only.  This, 
however,  we  certainly  know — that  atmospheric  microbes 
may,  and  do,  come  from  the  earth  and  vegetation,  or  from 
the  lungs  and  exhalations  of  animals.  We  have  no  reason 
for  saying  that  they  may  not  multiply  in  the  air  itself,  but 
we  know  that  they  are  ever  floating  about  us  in  inconceiva- 
ble numbers,  and  that  while  they  are  more  numerous  in 
cities  and  towns  than  in  the  open  country,  and  in  wet  places 
than  in  a  dry  soil,  yet  they  are  found  appreciably  every- 
where, except,  so  far  as  we  can  ascertain,  on  the  tops  of 
high  mountains.  Moisture  is  favorable  to  their  propagation 
and  existence.  Some  are  adapted  to  live  in  cold  regions, 


EFFECTS  OF  CLIMATE.  13 

but  more  require  a  warm  temperature.  Changes  of  weather 
seem  also  to  favor  them,  and  a  marked  rise  or  fall  in  the 
barometer  has  been  noticed  to  affect  their  numbers  and 
vitality. 

I  have  observed  that  in  plants  which  I  had  kept  too 
warm  and  then  suddenly  exposed  to  cold,  a  fungoid  growth 
could  be  detected  in  twenty-four  hours.  The  leaves  would 
then  change  in  color  and  either  shrivel  up  or  wilt.  The 
roots  would  fail  to  take  up  moisture,  the  spongioles  being 
apparently  paralyzed  and  their  functions  destroyed.  Exam- 
ining them  carefully  it  could  be  seen  that  something  like  a 
process  of  fermentation  was  going  on  around  them  —  in 
other  words,  that  fungoid  exhalations  or  microbes  were 
gathering  upon  them,  that  these  gradually  extended  through 
the  rootlets,  while  those  on  the  leaves  were  reaching  out  to 
the  stems  and  buds.  All  the  green  color  of  the  plant  disap- 
peared, the  coloring  matter  apparently  yielding  to  chemical 
decomposition  under  the  exhausting  influence  of  microbes, 
and  finally  the  plant  would  turn  yellow,  droop,  and  die. 

Place  a  child  predisposed  to  indisposition,  or  even  a 
healthy  person,  in  circumstances  equally  unfavorable  and 
the  consequences  are  similar.  A  change  from  a  warm  to  a 
cold  atmosphere  is  one  of  -the  most  common  causes  of 
disease.  The  conditions  of  life  in  this  country  are  especially 
calculated  to  furnish  ample  illustrations  of  this.  In  summer, 
people  are  apt  to  counteract  the  effects  of  heat  by  removing 
portions  of  their  covering  and  seeking  a  cool  resting-place, 
glad  sometimes  of  a  current  of  air  which  feels  refreshing  yet 
is  fraught  with  peril.  In  winter  most  of  us  live  in  over- 
heated houses,  from  which  necessity  takes  us  often  suddenly 
into  a  wet  or  cold  external  atmosphere.  The  consequence 
is  a  cold,  or  inflammation  of  the  lungs,  or  worse.  A  cough 
is  one  of  the  first  symptoms,  and  on  examination  it  is  found 
that  a  peculiar  microbe  has  attached  itself  to  the  bronchial 
tubes  or  upper  air-passages,  producing  an  irritation,  and  the 
cough  is  Nature's  effort  to  get  rid  of  it.  Or  it  may  become 
attached  to  the  mucous  membrane  of  the  nose,  giving  rise 


14  MICROBES. 


to  what  is  variously  known  as  "  cold  in  the  head,"  coryza, 
and  acute  catarrh.  It  can  readily  be  understood  that  in  the 
latter  case  it  is  more  easy  to  remove  the  cause  of  the 
trouble,  but  where  there  is  a  cough  the  disease  germs  may 
spread  downward  to  the  lungs,  extending  their  influence 
throughout  the  tissues,  and  producing  bronchitis  or  pneu- 
monia as  the  case  might  be. 

Dr.  Wetter  is  of  opinion  that  the  special  disease-germ  in 
pneumonia,  pneumococcus,  may  be  conveyed  for  short  dis- 
tances through  the  air,  or  by  a  third  person,  or  by  clothing. 
This  would  rank  pneumonia  as  both  contagious  and  infec- 
tious, which  accords  with  the  modern  idea  that  it  is  something 
very  different  from  a  simple  inflammation,  as  was  supposed 
a  few  years  ago.  The  microbe  of  this  disease  is  not  killed 
by  drying,  and  may,  as  is  believed,  be  preserved  for  years  in 
a  dry  condition  and  then  made  to  renew  all  its  activity  on 
being  placed  under  favorable  conditions  again.  It  has  been 
found  in  the  saliva  of  a  person  who  had  recently  recovered, 
and  thus  there  is  every  indication  that  the  disease  so 
common  in  this  country  should  be  regarded  as  dangerously 
contagious.  If  the  microbe  be  not  destroyed  the  disease 
may  become  chronic,  or  develop  into  asthma  or  consump, 
tion,  and  end  only  in  death.  The  propagation  of  microbes 
is  rapid  and  enormous,  some  calculations  having  led  to  the 
belief  that  in  one  hour  less  than  half  a  dozen  may,  under 
favorable  conditions,  increase  to  fifty  millions. 

In  the  course  of  my  observations  and  experiments  I  have 
often  observed  that  in  times  when  coughs  were  prevalent, 
and  when  what  appeared  to  be  ordinary  colds  assumed  the 
character  of  an  epidemic,  vegetation  was  also  affected. 
Plants  did  not  flourish  in  their  customary  manner.  The 
young  leaves  chiefly  suffered ;  sometimes  evidences  of  the 
existence  of  microbes  became  visible  on  the  more  tender 
parts,  and  the  whole  plant  would  assume  a  stricken  and  un- 
healthy appearance. 

The  changes  which  generally  occur  in  spring-time  — 
changes  not  only  in  temperature  but  in  the  degree  of  moist- 


EFFECTS  OF  CLIMATE.  15 

ure  or  dryness  of  the  atmosphere — are  especially  calculated 
to  produce  disease  in  vegetation  exactly  as  they  do  in  man, 
and  the  affection  is  more  severe,  more  difficult  to  combat, 
and  more  apt  to  lead  to  a  bad  termination  than  is  the  heat 
of  summer  or  the  steady  cold  of  winter. 

Plants  kept  in  places  where  they  were  away  from  the  full 
exhilarating  influence  of  light,  or  in  an  atmosphere  where 
there  was  no  free  circulation  of  air,  would  speedily  become 
sickly,  and  their  growth,  if  any,  would  be  weak  and  un- 
healthy. 

Man,  submitted  to  similar  conditions,  suffers  in  the  same 
way,  and  children  brought  up  in  close  places,  or  even  being 
made  to  work  in  them,  where  air  and  light  are  insufficiently 
supplied,  become  stunted  in  growth.  The  tissues  of  their 
bodies  are  weakened,  their  senses  are  not  fully  developed, 
and  their  minds  are  imperfectly  formed.  Poverty,  crime, 
and  much  misery  are  too  often  the  lot  of  such  persons,  and 
all  their  misfortune  may  be  attributed  to  the  fact  of  their 
having  been  confined  in  surroundings  where  disease  germs 
are  so  abundant  that  the  microbes  necessarily  obtain  access 
to  the  blood  and  are  circulated  with  it  through  all  parts 
of  the  system. 

I  may  here  direct  attention  to  two  well-known  diseases, 
whooping-cough  and  diphtheria,  by  way  of  illustrating  fur- 
ther some  points  that  I  have  mentioned.  Both  of  these 
may  result  from  infection,  and  one,  if  not  both,  may  also 
arise  from  the  use  or  presence  of  impure  water  or  decaying 
vegetation.  They  are,  however,  produced  by  a  different 
form  of  germ,  although  in  each  case  the  seat  of  the  trouble 
is  very  local  and  well  defined.  It  is  always  primarily  in  the 
throat,  but  the  microbe  that  produces  diphtheria  cannot 
engender  a  whooping-cough,  and,  vice  versa,  the  germ  that 
gives  rise  to  whooping-cough  never  excites  diphtheria.  That 
they  do  not  bring  about  disease  in  everybody  who  inhales 
them  is  simply  due  to  the  fact  that  the  condition  of  the 
throat  is  not  favorable  to  their  development,  or  that  the 
vital  powers  of  the  individual  are  sufficiently  strong  to  resist 


1 6  MICROBES. 


them.  It  will  be  understood,  therefore,  how  it  is  that  almost 
all  cases  of  diphtheria  are  preceded  by  what  is  called  a  cold. 

The  special  germ  of  this  terrible  disease  has  been  identified 
and  isolated  by  the  director  of  the  Pasteur  Institute  and  M. 
Versin.  They  have  succeeded  in  reproducing  the  disease  in 
rabbits,  fowls,  pigeons,  and  guinea-pigs  by  inoculating  these 
animals  with  cultured  microbes.  They  have  also  been  able 
to  isolate  the  special  product  of  fermentation  caused  by 
these  microbes,  and  by  using  that,  without  the  germ  itself 
they  have  brought  about  all  the  symptoms  of  diphtheria, 
including  the  difficulty  of  respiration  and  paralysis  of  the 
muscles.  They  have  further  shown  that  a  person  -who  is 
perfectly  healthy  may  inhale  these  microbes  with  impunity, 
but  that  if  there  be  any  weakness  of  the  mucous  membrane 
of  the  throat  the  disease  is  speedily  developed.  This  accounts 
for  the  security  enjoyed  by  many  people,  and  also  for  the 
frequency  of  the  disease  after  attacks  of  cold,  scarlet-fever, 
or  measles.  It  points  to  the  necessity  for  giving  attention 
to  sore  throats  or  slight  ailments  when  diphtheria  is  preva- 
lent, and  to  the  necessity  of  frequently  washing  the  mouth 
and  throat  with  such  an  efficacious  destroyer  of  microbes 
and  micro-organisms  as  that  which,  in  my  hands  and  among 
thousands  of  my  patients  and  correspondents,  has  not  yet 
failed. 

Irrigations  such  as  those  mentioned  should  be  made  with 
copious  quantities  of  the  fluid,  a  rule  which  my  own  experi- 
ence has  taught  me,  and  which  is  recognized  by  all  who  have 
used  less  powerful  parasiticides  than  mine.  The  New  York 
State  Board  of  Health  on  one  occasion  recommended  sul- 
phurous-acid gas — the  fumes  of  burning  sulphur — as  a  pre- 
ventative  and  disinfectant  for  diphtheria.  But  the  special 
germ,  the  streptococcus  diphtherialis,  is  not  destroyed  by  that 
gas.  It  yields  to  three  agents  only — carbolic  acid,  corrosive 
sublimate,  and  my  microbe  killer,  and  the  first  two  of  these 
are  powerful  poisons,  and  as  dangerous  to  the  patient  as 
they  are  to  the  microbe. 

It  is  worthy  of  mention  here  that  diphtheria  is  not  con- 


EFFECTS  OF  CLIMATE.  \J 

fined  to  members  of  the  human  family.  Animals  are  liable 
to  it,  and  a  case  is  mentioned  where  a  kitten  conveyed  the 
disease  to  four  members  of  one  family  before  the  truth  be- 
came known  and  the  animal  could  be  killed.  The  symptoms 
in  that  instance  were  unusually  virulent,  but  no  deaths 
ensued.  It  is  beyond  doubt  that  the  germ  of  diphtheria, 
like  that  of  tubercle,  may  be  conveyed  through  the  atmos- 
phere, as,  indeed,  may  the  microbe  of  malarial  or  intermit- 
tent fever,  and  many  others,  hence  the  facility  with  which  a 
child  may  take  the  disease  from  any  pet  animal. 

Most  of  the  microbes  or  bacteria  that  are  to  be  found  in 
the  atmosphere  come  from  the  ground,  or  from  the  breath, 
or  sputa,  or  persons  of  individuals.  Heavy  rains  tend  to 
wash  them  out  of  the  air,  but,  when  thus  thrown  to  the  soil, 
the  moisture  favors  their  increase,  and  thus,  as  the  ground 
dries,  they  may  be  carried  back  into  the  atmosphere  in 
increased  numbers. 

Something  similar  may  be  illustrated  in  another  way.  It 
has  been  shown  by  actual  observation  that  the  tubercle 
microbe  exists  in  the  perspiration  of  persons  suffering  from 
phthisis  or  consumption  in  any  form,  but  they  are  not  an 
exudation  from  the  skin.  They  come  from  the  sputum, 
possibly  from  the  breath,  and,  being  suspended  in  the  air, 
they  are  carried  to  the  limbs  or  the  bedclothes  of  the  patient, 
and  thence  to  the  surface  of  the  body. 

It  is  an  error,  however,  to  suppose  that  the  atmosphere  is 
the  principal  nidus  of  the  disease  forms.  Bacteria,  microbes, 
and  micro-organisms  of  all  kinds  exist  in  infinite  numbers  in 
the  soil.  Some  observers  consider  that  to  be  their  chief 
breeding-place.  All  are  not  disease-producers,  but  all  seem 
to  exercise  some  useful  function,  and  the  most  plausible 
suggestion  yet  made  upon  this  is  that,  by  inducing  a  process 
of  fermentation  in  the  soil,  they  bring  about  chemical 
decompositions  which  liberate  elements  that  are  necessary 
to  the  nutrition  and  development  of  higher  forms  of  life. 

Among  disease  germs  that  are  found  in  the  soil,  those  of 
typhoid  fever,  malaria,  and  tetanus  are  most  frequent,  and 


1 8  MICROBES. 


hence  it  is  that  the  breaking  up  of  new  land,  especially  in 
damp  places,  so  frequently  produces  ague  or  "  chills  and 
fever  "  among  local  residents.  It  is  a  popular  error  to  sup- 
pose, therefore,  that  the  earth  destroys  microbes,  and  it 
seems  to  have  arisen  out  of  the  fact  that  dry  soil  renders 
them  for  a  time  comparatively  innocuous. 

It  had  long  been  supposed  that  tetanus  or  locked-jaw  fol- 
lows as  an  injury  to  the  nerves  in  certain  wounds,  although 
how  it  could  so  result  was  never  explained.  It  is  now 
acknowledged  to  be  the  work  of  a  specific  microbe,  and  it 
has  been  shown  experimentally  that  the  disease  may  be 
produced  in  animals  by  inpculation  with  the  organism  as  it 
is  found  in  the  soil.  In  Cuba  tetanus  is  very  common. 
Statistics  taken  at  Havana  show  that  82  per  cent,  of  wounds 
of  the  lower  extremities  are  followed  by  tetanic  symptoms. 
It  is  a  practice  there  among  the  country  people  to  dress 
wounds  with  dry  earth,  and  tetanus  invariably  follows.  For 
a  long  while  this  fact  remained  unexplained,  until  a  micro- 
scopic examination  of  the  soil  showed  it  to  be  particularly 
rich  in  the  special  microbe  of  that  disease. 

The  ground  is  the  great  resting-  and  breeding-place  of 
micro-organisms  of  all  kinds,  whether  they  be  harmless  or 
capable  of  producing  disease.  It  is  easy  to  foresee,  there- 
fore, how  they  can  pass  into  the  atmosphere,  or  on  to  the 
surface  of  bodies,  and  thus  be  spread  everywhere.  It  be- 
comes apparent,  also,  how  animals  and  plants  may  be  alike 
affected  by  them,  and  how  rapidly  they  multiply  under 
favorable  conditions,  which  may  be  briefly  summarized  as 
warmth,  moisture,  and  usually  a  deficiency  of  light. 

If  we  cover  up  a  pit  of  potatoes  without  the  precaution  of 
keeping  down  the  temperature  and  moisture,  fermentation 
sets  in,  and  soon  fungoid  growths  are  everywhere  percepti- 
ble, while  the  substance  of  the  potato  becomes  diseased  and 
rots.  If  the  atmosphere  of  the  greenhouse  be  kept  too 
warm  and  moist,  fungoid  growths  begin  to  show  themselves 
directly,  and  in  due  time  the  plants  become  sick.  Or  again, 
the  same  circumstances  arise  if  two  or  three  weeks  pass 


MICROBES  IN  STALE  MEAT. 


FUNGUS  AND  MICROBES  ON  DECAYING  POTATOES. 


EFFECTS  OF  CLIMATE.  19 

without  the  assistance  of  the  sun's  rays  to  purify  the  atmos- 
phere. Although  this  is  well  understood  by  persons  who 
have  charge  of  flowers,  I  can  imagine  an  objection  which 
those  to  whom  the  suggestions  may  be  new  would  be  likely 
to  raise.  For  most  people  have  read  of,  if  they  have  not 
seen,  the  rank  vegetation  of  the  tropics,  where,  amid  an 
abundance  of  heat  and  moisture,  often  with  an  absence  of 
sunlight,  the  most  luxuriant  and  healthful  vegetation  that 
the  world  knows,  may  be  discovered.  Or  again,  we  may  go 
into  the  deep  woods  in  our  own  country,  and  there,  in 
shaded  nooks  and  corners,  find  specimens  that  are  not  to  be 
found  elsewhere,  and  which,  notwithstanding  their  healthy 
appearance,  will  wither  and  die  as  soon  as  they  are  trans- 
ferred to  the  garden  bed. 

How  is  this?  In  the  first  place,  certain  germs  must,  as  I 
have  already  shown,  have  certain  suitable  conditions  in 
which  to  increase  and  flourish,  and  although  they  may  be 
produced  in  abundance  in  such  locations  as  those  described, 
yet  the  plants  that  grow  in  the  same  spots  are  proof  against 
them,  they  are  not  suited  to  their  development,  and,  in  fact, 
they  grow  in  spite  of  them.  That  germs  are  produced  in 
such  places,  every  victim  of  malaria  can  testify. 

But  this  calls  for  another  observation.  Plants  are  adapted 
to  the  conditions  that  surround  them,  and  conversely  the 
climate  of  any  locality  has  vegetable  growth  adapted  to  it. 
High  latitudes  and  high  elevations  in  low  latitudes  are  the 
homes  of  the  pines  and  firs,  while  more  temperate  regions 
give  us  the  olive  and  the  oak,  and  in  the  tropics  the  palms 
and  all  the  grandest  development  of  endogenous  vegetation 
most  abound.  This  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  law 
arising  out  of  the  circumstances  attending  the  formation  of 
the  earth  itself ;  nevertheless,  it  is  everywhere  evident  that 
Nature  leaves  nothing  unoccupied,  so  that  when  the  con- 
ditions are  such  that  one  form  of  life  cannot  continue,  we 
find  another  especially  adapted  to  it. 

These,  however,  are  exceptions  in  the  vegetable  world ; 
but  similar  exceptions  are  to  be  found  in  the  animal  creation. 


20  MICROBES. 


Life  that  flourishes  in  the  tropics  would  perish  in  Labrador, 
and  the  seal  of  Alaska  would  soon  disappear  if  removed  to 
the  waters  of  the  Amazon.  Animal  life  is  also  to  be  met 
with  under  exactly  the  same  conditions  as  those  in  which 
we  find  the  flowers  that  grow  apart  from  light  and  air  in  the 
dim  recesses  of  the  woods.  But  this  only  proves  the  rule. 
The  highest  and  most  complete  forms  of  vegetation  exist 
only  under  the  requirements  given,  and  man,  as  the  highest 
form  of  animal  life,  requires  the  same.  Like  the  oak  and  the 
elm,  he  needs  light,  air,  and  a  more  or  less  equable  tempera- 
ture. He  does  not  flourish  where  the  mushroom  and  the 
snail  are  most  at  home.  The  gas  that  kills  a  rose  will 
destroy  an  animal.  You  may  drown  the  one  almost  as 
readily  as  the  other.  Both  succumb  alike  to  poisonous 
compounds.  Both  are  subject  to  disease,  and  very  often 
are  alike  affected  by  the  same  causes.  Hence  the  relevancy 
of  studying  Nature  in  all  her  varied  forms,  if  we  would 
come  to  a  correct  understanding  of  the  conditions  of  life 
and  disease. 

It  is  advisable,  even,  not  to  be  content  with  a  comprehen- 
sion of  the  organic  world  alone,  if  we  would  fully  appreciate 
how  much  there  is  to  learn  outside  of  it,  and  how  thoroughly 
all  bears  down  upon  the  same  conclusion — change  is  univer- 
sal. The  rocks,  even  the  mountains,  are  wasting  away, 
slowly,  it  is  true,  but  none  the  less  surely,  under  influences 
that  are  unceasing.  Among  them,  light,  air,  and  moisture 
fill  a  prominent  part,  but  minute,  invisible  growth  is  a  pow- 
erful aid  likewise.  The  disintegration  of  the  solid  rock  is 
influenced  largely  by  the  growth,  in  the  first  instance,  of 
minute  fungi,  and  afterwards  upon  their  remains  by  structures 
of  a  higher  organization  as  lichens  and  allied  plants ;  and 
where  there  is  a  crevice  or  a  crack  in  a  rock,  even  a  disruption 
may  in  time  be  produced  by  vegetable  formation. 

The  indications  in  such  instances  are  to  discover  a  means 
by  which  the  growth  may  be  prevented,  or  if  that  fail,  then 
a  means  by  which  it  can  be  killed.  In  business  this  is  con- 
stantly being  attended  to.  Shippers  of  fruit,  for  example, 


EFFECTS  OF  CLIMATE.  21 

pack  their  produce  as  dry  as  possible  and  keep  down  the 
temperature,  so  preventing  the  formation  of  fungi  and  the 
process  of  fermentation.  Ice  is  oftentimes  used  for  this 
purpose.  Florists,  too,  when  shipping  plants  in  the  warm 
season  are  careful  to  secure  ventilation  by  means  of  holes  in 
their  packages,  or  in  cold  weather  to  line  them  with  some 
material  capable  of  absorbing  moisture.  Without  such  pre- 
cautions it  would  be  a  hazardous  business  to  send  fruits 
from  California  or  the  extreme  South  to  New  York,  but 
with  them  even  the  most  delicate  produce  of  warm  cli- 
mates can  be  transported  with  safety  and  advantage,  as 
the  condition  of  grapes  of  St.  Angeles,  as  seen  in  New 
York,  sufficiently  testifies.  In  the  same  manner  the  produce 
of  the  West  Indies  is  safely  carried  to  the  markets  of 
London  and  Paris. 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  about  the  disintegration  of 
the  Egyptian  obelisk  in  Central  Park.  It  was  well  known 
by  people  who  understood  such  things  that  that  would  be 
the  inevitable  result  of  transferring  the  monument  to  this 
climate,  which  on  account  of  the  great  variations  between 
extremes  of  heat  and  cold  in  summer  and  winter  respec- 
tively is  very  detrimental.  It  is  true  that  the  means  taken 
to  prevent  destruction  were  well  calculated  to  bring  it  about, 
submitting  the  stone  to  high  degrees  of  temperature  being 
about  the  worst  course  that  could  be  pursued.  It  should, 
therefore,  be  no  surprise  to  find  that  the  surface  of  the 
stone  is  falling  away,  although  the  finer  monuments,  one  in 
Paris,  the  other  in  London,  are  well  preserved.  But  inde- 
pendently of  the  injury  which  has  resulted  from  the  display 
of  so  much  ignorance,  it  is  certain  that  fungoid  growths 
have  done  their  work,  and  that  to  this  cause  very  much  of 
the  trouble  is  due.  A  damp  season  gives  ample  illustration 
of  the  rapidity  of  these  formations  in  New  York,  where  a 
green  fungus,  the  protococcus  viridis,  forms  abundantly  on 
the  brown  sandstone,  of  which  so  many  of  the  houses  are 
constructed.  It  is  more  rare  to  find  this  on  marble  or  lime- 
stone, where  the  absorption  of  moisture  is  more  difficult. 


22  MICROBES. 


If  we  examine  a  piece  of  lumber  that  has  been  lying  for 
some  time  under  the  influence  of  air  and  moisture,  and 
especially  if  the  sunlight  has  been  limited,  fungoid  growths 
may  be  seen  upon  the  surface, — and  the  practical  problem 
put  before  us  is  how  to  get  rid  of  them,  and  so  to  preserve 
the  timber  from  destruction.  Let  any  textile  fabric,  a  man's 
coat  or  a  woman's  gown,  get  wet  and  be  put  away  in  that 
condition  in  a  close  closet.  In  a  very  short  time  fungoid 
matter  can  be  detected  by  the  musty  smell  that  is  given  off, 
even  though  it  may  not  be  perceptible  to  the  unaided 
eye.  Leave  the  clothes  in  .these  conditions  for  a  short  time 
and  they  rot  and  fall  to  pieces.  In  each  of  these  illustra- 
tions the  fungi  are  different ;  and  our  purpose  is  not  so 
much  to  know  how  they  would  be  classified  by  the  biologist, 
as  it  is  to  learn  the  means  by  which  to  get  rid  of  them.  It 
is  the  same  throughout.  It  would  be  easy  to  enumerate 
hundreds,  aye  thousands,  of  similar  examples,  and  in  every 
one  the  cause  is  the  same  ;  the  proofs  being  so  marked  and 
so  unanswerable  that  none  but  a  person  who  is  wilfully 
ignorant,  or  who  is  blinded  by  prejudice,  could  possibly 
question  them. 

The  special  study  of  microbes  as  a  branch  of  biological 
science  is  full  of  interest  and  value,  but  it  is  not  material  to 
a  practical  application  of  remedial  agents  in  the  treatment 
of  disease.  It  is  well  to  identify  the  special  microbes  of 
typhoid  and  tetanus  in  the  ground,  but  when  it  comes  to 
treating  either  of  those  diseases,  it  is  of  no  moment  that  two 
specific  germs  are  there.  It  suffices  to  destroy  them,  and 
one  treatment  will  do  that.  Thus  then  it  is  not  necessary 
to  my  present  purpose  to  classify  the  microbes  that  are  met 
with,  and  it  is  only  as  indicating  the  progress  of  the  study 
that  I  refer  to  that.  My  object  is  rather  to  point  out  the 
all-important  part  they  take  in  the  causation  of  disease,  and 
to  make  known  the  means  by  which  they  may  be  destroyed, 
and  prevented  from  increasing,  that  thus  the  substance  in 
which  they  are  found  may  be  preserved.  In  subsequent 
chapters  I  shall  show  how  this  is  done  by  myself  and 
attempted  by  others. 


RUST  ON  ROSE  LEAVES. 


FUNGI  AND  SPORES  FROM  CLOTHING. 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE   CAUSE   OF  DISEASE 

A  PERUSAL  of  the  preceding  pages  will  have  suggested  a 
question  which  it  is  time  that  I  consider.  Assuming  the 
force  of  the  undoubted  facts  that  have  been  given,  how 
does  sickness  begin  ?  What  causes  illness  in  the  animal 
frame  ? 

I  have  hinted  at  this,  but  only  briefly  and  incidentally, 
and  it  is  necessary  now  to  review  the  subject  more  in  detail. 
Microbes  may  be  taken  into  the  system  in  various  ways. 
They  may  come  to  us  not  only  by  the  lungs  from  the  atmos- 
phere, but  with  the  water  that  we  drink,  the  food  that  we 
eat ;  or  again  by  contact  with  other  bodies,  and  also  by 
inoculation  when  there  is  any  abrasion  of  the  surface  of  the 
skin.  Water  that  is  ordinarily  used  for  drinking  purposes 
always  contains  them.  The  water  of  rivers,  lakes,  arid  pools 
is  full  of  them.  Rain-water,  collected  as  it  falls  in  perfectly 
clean  vessels,  is  found  to  contain  them,  sometimes  in  very- 
large  quantities.  In  this  case  they  have  been  gathered  from 
the  atmosphere.  Spring-water,  at  the  moment  that  it  issues 
from  the  ground,  is  the  purest  in  this  particular,  but  water 
immediately  after  distillation  is  alone  free  from  them.  I  say 
immediately,  for  if  distilled  water  be  allowed  to  stand  for 
only  a  short  time  exposed  to  the  atmosphere,  an  examina- 
tion with  the  microscope  readily  shows  that  microbes  have 
begun  to  collect  in  it.  Mineral  waters  are  not  free  from 
them,  and  sea-water  contains  them  in  wondrous  abundance. 
Filtering  does  not  suffice  to  purify  water  from  these  minute 

23 


24  MICROBES. 


organisms.  I  have  already  stated  the  measurement  of  some 
of  them  as  about  one  sixth  the  diameter  of  a  blood  corpus- 
cle, but  others  are  too  minute  for  any  estimate  to  be  formed, 
actual  measurement  being  out  of  the  question.  They  are 
quite  able  to  pass  through  any  filtering  medium  with  which 
we  are  acquainted,  not  even  excepting  porous  stone. 

The  minuteness  of  such  bodies  is  wellnigh  inconceivable. 
An  idea  of  it  can  best  be  formed  by  stating  what  is  the 
power  of  a  good  microscope.  It  has  been  found  possible 
to  rule  lines  upon  glass  which  are  a  ninety-thousandth  of 
an  inch  apart.  And  an  accurate  and  experienced  observer 
is  capable  of  distinguishing  objects  that  are  the  one-hundred- 
thousandth  of  an  inch  in  diameter.  Microbes  of  this  dimen- 
sion would  be  so  small  that  ten  thousand  millions  would  be 
required  to  cover  a  square  inch  of  surface.  Microscopes  can 
be  made  of  much  greater  power  than  this,  but  Sir  John  Lub- 
bock  is  of  opinion  that,  by  the  very  nature  of  light,  investi- 
gations of  greater  minuteness  become  uncertain  and  untrust- 
worthy. In  this  view  he  is  sustained  by  Sir  Henry  Roscoe  ; 
but  skilled  microscopists  are  also  to  be  found,  and  among 
them  is  Dr.  Dallinger,  the  President  of  the  Royal  Micro- 
scopical Society,  who  fix  the  limit  of  vision  at  the  five-hun- 
dred-thousandth of  an  inch,  which  gives  us  the  enormous 
multitude  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  millions  of 
these  little  creatures  on  an  inch  of  surface.  Nor  may  we 
stop  here,  for  it  is  beyond  doubt  that  there  are  yet  others 
smaller,  so  small  as  to  defy  all  the  powers  which  man  can 
bring  to  define  them.  It  will  readily  be  understood,  there- 
fore, why  no  process  of  filtration  that  is  known  to  us  will 
suffice  to  render  water  absolutely  free  from  them,  and  the 
only  remedy  at  our  command  implies  then  their  destruction. 

I  have  already  given,  when  speaking  of  disease,  an  explana- 
tion of  the  reason  why  unpleasant  consequences  do  not 
always  follow  from  taking  microbes  into  the  system,  as  we 
certainly  do  whenever  we  drink  water.  It  is  because  the 
particular  form  of  microbe  may  be  harmless,  or  because  the 
conditions  surrounding  it  in  the  system  are  not  such  as  are 


THE   CAUSE   OF  DISEASE.  2$ 

adapted  to  its  increase.  They  are  then  either  harmless  or 
they  perish  and  pass  away.  But  where  water  is  very  foul 
the  quantity  of  living  organic  matter  is  increased,  and  the 
chances  of  being  able  to  resist  them  are  diminished.  The 
disease  then  ensues — and  may  become  epidemic — which  is 
produced  by  that  particular  microbe  which  is  most  abundant 
in  the  water. 

A  few  years  ago  a  manufacturing  town  in  New  England 
suffered  for  nearly  a  year  from  an  epidemic  of  typhoid  fever 
and  diphtheria.  The  latter  was  severe,  nine  tenths  of  the 
children  in  a  particular  locality  being  affected  by  it.  But  it 
was  limited  to  a  district  that  could  readily  be  defined.  In- 
side of  the  line  few  children  escaped,  outside  of  it  none  were 
afflicted.  After  careful  investigation  it  was  discovered  that 
the  families  that  lived  where  the  disease  prevailed  all  ob- 
tained their  water  from  the  same  source,  and  microscopical 
examination  showed  that  it  was  filled  with  organic  matter 
and  with  microbes  of  a  peculiar  form. 

By  a  strange  coincidence,  typhoid  fever  of  a  remarkably 
virulent  type  prevailed  at  the  same  time  in  the  same  town, 
but  on  the  opposite  side  of  it,  and  more  than  a  mile  from 
the  diphtheritic  district.  This,  too,  was  confined  to  a  small 
settlement  of  about  fifty  families,  but  every  one  of  them  was 
attacked.  These  people  got  their  water  from  a  spring  that 
flowed  from  a  hillside,  and  for  a  long  time  it  was  not  sus- 
pected. It  looked  clear  and  sparkling  and  was  pleasant  to 
drink.  As  a  last  resource  it  was  submitted  to  examination, 
and  to  the  surprise  of  everybody  it  was  found  to  contain 
microbes  and  much  organic  matter.  The  use  of  it  was  given 
up  and  the  fever  ceased.  Pursuing  the  inquiry  further  it 
was  afterwards  discovered  that  this  water,  apparently  pure 
and  from  so  unsuspected  a  source,  actually  percolated  through 
ground  that  had  become  impure  from  causes  attending  the 
construction  of  some  houses  a  year  before  on  the  high  ground 
above  where  the  water  made  its  exit  from  the  earth. 

In  this  connection  it  is  well  to  repeat  that  the  micro- 
organism of  diphtheria  has  been  certainly  isolated  and 


26  MICROBES. 


cultivated.  It  was  at  one  time  thought  to  be  a  form  that 
had  been  described  by  Loeffler,  but  more  recent  investiga- 
tions show  that  it  is  a  different  variety,  and  that  it  is  usually 
accompanied  by  others  which  appear  to  be  found  also  in 
different  diseased  conditions.  It  is  about  one  micromilli- 
metre  in  length,  and  they  tend  to  form  chains  as  they  grow. 
When  the  cultivated  microbes  were  injected  into  other 
animals,  as  rabbits,  pigeons,  and  hens,  they  always  produced 
disease,  sometimes  with  suppuration,  and  it  is  a  curious  fact 
that  at  present  no  distinction  has  been  found  between  the 
microbe  of  diphtheria  and  those  found  in  inflamed  wounds 
and  erysipelas.  It  may  yet  be  discovered,  although  phleg- 
monous  inflammation  and  erysipelas  are  so  closely  connected 
that  it  is  more  than  probable  that  the  micro-organisms  in 
both  are  identical. 

The  vitality  of  these  bodies  is  very  great.  They  are  not 
killed  by  drying  even  at  a  high  temperature,  and  even  the 
vapor  of  burning  sulphur  cannot  be  relied  on  to  kill  them. 

In  the  case  above  mentioned,  it  became  evident  that 
filtration  through  the  earth  of  impure  water  does  not  neces- 
sarily purify  it.  It  has,  however,  been  proved  that  if  it  be 
sufficient  to  remove  the  bacteria,  the  water,  although  other- 
wise apparently  impure,  does  not  produce  disease.  Within 
the  last  few  months  the  students  at  Yale  College  have  been 
suffering  from  an  epidemic  of  typhoid  fever  which  in  some 
instances  assumed  a  virulent  type.  When  it  became  so  bad 
as  to  excite  attention  outside  of  New  Haven,  it  was  admitted 
that  typhoid  disease  is  almost  endemic  there,  that  in  fact  it 
is  always  more  or  less  prevalent,  although  the  truth  has 
hitherto  been  carefully  concealed.  On  investigation  it 
became  known  that  the  system  of  cesspools  is  commonly 
followed  throughout  the  town,  that  bad  plumbing  is  every- 
where to  be  found,  that  very  little  attention  is  paid  to 
sanitary  engineering, "and  that  most  of  the  buildings,  espe- 
cially those  of  the  College,  are  damp,  musty,  and  in  the 
basements  covered  with  vegetable  microbes  and  mildew. 
Yet  in  spite  of  all  this  evidence  of  the  true  origin  of  the 


THE   CAUSE   OF  DISEASE.  2J 

disease,  scientific  men  in  New  Haven  insist  on  saying  that 
the  fever  was  brought  into  the  place  from  outside  sources. 
In  truth  it  was  carried  by  negligence,  by  wilfully  overlooking 
causes  that  were  every  day  before  the  eyes  of  every  observer, 
and  they  whose  duty  it  is  to  guard  the  welfare  of  the  stu- 
dents, and  who  from  ignorance  or  perversity  omitted  to  take 
the  necessary  precautions,  were  responsible  for  whatever 
disease  and  death  ensued. 

Records  show,  as  might  be  expected,  that  mortality  in  that 
College  has  hitherto  increased  year  by  year.  The  cultiva- 
tion of  the  micro-organisms  goes  on,  and  as  they  increase  so 
their  work  extends.  Thus  in  1883,  there  were  twenty  deaths 
from  typhoid  in  New  Haven.  In  1886,  the  number  of 
deaths  was  fifty  per  cent,  more  than  in  1885,  and  125  per 
cent,  more  than  what  it  had  been  a  few  years  previously. 
In  1888  no  less  than  eight  cases  occurred  in  one  house,  and 
in  five  months  in  1889  there  were  104  cases  and  24  deaths  ! 
The  general  condition  of  health  among  the  students  at  Yale 
is  acknowledged  to  be  not  good,  and  it  is  worst  among  those 
students  whose  rooms  are  so  situated  that  sunlight  and  free 
ventilation  cannot  be  obtained.  Diseases  of  the  throat  and 
lungs,  besides  malarial  and  typhoid  fevers,  are  most  preva- 
lent, but  there  is  no  affection  which  may  not  be  brought 
about  by  such  causes  as  there  exist. 

The  popular  idea  which  is  at  variance  with  this  is  in  error. 
Take,  for  example,  pneumonia,  which,  because  it  is  most 
frequent  in  certain  conditions  of  the  atmosphere,  people  are 
apt  to  attribute  to  that  cause.  There  is  now  no  longer  any 
room  for  doubt  that  this,  instead  of  being  as  was  once  sup- 
posed a  mere  inflammation  of  the  tissues  of  the  lungs,  is  a 
specific  infectious  disease.  Wherever  it  exists  there  is  a 
microbe,  or  micro-organism,  in  the  lungs.  This  is  so  certain 
that  it  was  classified  and  named — Micrococcus  Pasteuri,  after 
the  distinguished  French  experimenter. 

The  influenza  epidemic  afforded  opportunity  for  examin- 
ing various  forms  of  bacteria,  and  Dr.  T.  M.  Prudden  fur- 
nished some  interesting  notes  of  observation  on  the  subject. 


28  MICROBES. 


Where  it  was  complicated  with  bronchitis  he  found  the 
microbe  known  as  Streptococcus  pyogenes  always  prevalent, 
but  other  forms  were  observable,  notably  Diplococcus  pneu- 
monice  of  Fraenkel,  and  Staphyloc occus  pyogenes  aureus.  This 
last  is  common  in  cases  of  common  cold  in  the  head.  Where 
pneumonia  was  the  principal  concomitant  of  the  epidemic 
the  Diplococcus  was  most  abundant,  and  it  was  fully  identi- 
fied both  by  culture  and  animal  inoculation.  The  Diplococ- 
cus is  almost  always  found  in  the  saliva  of  healthy  persons, 
but  this,  as  Dr.  Prudden  observed,  does  not  militate  against 
its  etiological  importance,  but  furnishes  a  most  satisfactory 
rationale  of  the  occurrence  of  the  disease.  Under  ordinary 
circumstances  it  is  harmless.  "  It  is  only  when  the  suitable 
predisposing  conditions — which  we  recognize  in  injuries  and 
in  exposure  to  cold  and  wet,  but  which  in  many  cases  we  do 
not  understand  at  all — are  fulfilled,  that  the  growth  of  the 
microbe  in  the  lungs  and  its  accompanying  lesions  can  occur. 

If  passed  into  the  blood  of  tender  animals,  such  as  rabbits 
or  mice,  it  produces  blood-poisoning  and  death.  In  less  sus- 
ceptible animals,  such  as  dogs  and  sheep,  it  produces  all  the 
symptoms  of  pneumonia,  or,  more  correctly,  pneumonic 
fever.  This  particular  microbe  acts  upon  the  lung  tissues, 
just  as  that  of  typhoid  fever  attacks  Peyer's  patches  in  the 
intestines,  and  that  of  malaria  enters  the  blood ;  but  sudden 
changes  of  temperature  bring  about  the  conditions  most 
favorable  to  its  growth. 

In  one  section  of  the  work  on  the  Croton  Aqueduct  pneu- 
monia was  for  some  time  extremely  troublesome.  Most  of 
the  workmen  were  attacked  and  several  died.  The  disease 
resisted  all  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  physicians,  who  failed 
to  lay  stress  upon  the  circumstance  that,  where  it  was  worst, 
the  rooms  were  badly  ventilated  and  dark,  as  well  as  damp. 
At  last  it  occurred  to  somebody  to  clean  out  the  place,  to 
have  the  walls  and  ceilings  limewashed,  to  purify  the  bed- 
ding and  clothes  of  the  men,  and  generally  to  take  measures 
customary  in  cases  of  fever,  and  from  that  time  there  were 
no  more  patients  suffering  from  "  pneumonia." 


-I-,  Q 


c. 


o 


o 


PNEUMONIA. 


SCARLET  FEVER. 


THE   CAUSE   OF  DISEASE.  2g 

To  the  casual  reader  there  may  seem  some  features  that 
are  obscure  in  this  subject,  and  which  it  may  be  well  to  ex- 
plain before  proceeding  further.  The  danger  of  infection 
through  the  atmosphere  is  probably  exaggerated  in  some 
directions.  Some  microbes,  like  that  of  malaria,  for  instance, 
are  more  active  in  this  way  than  others.  The  cholera  germ 
is  more  readily  destroyed  by  desiccation,  so  that,  taking 
these  two  instances  only,  it  will  be  seen  that  a  healthy  person 
may  be  much  more  readily  affected  with  intermittent  fever 
than  with  cholera,  assuming  that  he  is  placed  in  circum- 
stances apparently  favorable  to  both.  But  again,  a  disease 
germ  that  shall  be  harmless  when  taken  into  the  lungs  may 
enter  the  stomach  by  having  first  been  deposited  in  the  food. 
There  it  may  find  conditions  congenial  to  it,  where  it  may 
multiply,  and  thus  disease  will  ensue,  the  activity  of  the 
organism  depending  solely  on  the  conditions  surrounding  it. 
A  more  marked  illustration  of  this  is  presented  by  the  pro- 
cess attending  the  healing  of  wounds.  The  atmosphere  of  a 
room  may  apparently  be  perfectly  healthy,  that  is  to  say,  a 
person  may  live  in  it  without  fear  or  liability  to  infection,  or 
without  the  chance  of  incurring  disease  as  a  consequence  of 
taking  microbes  into  the  system  by  food  ;  and  yet  if  he  be 
suffering  from  a  wound,  there  may  be  sufficient  micro-organ- 
isms in  the  air  to  produce  suppuration  and  prevent  a  healthful 
and  rapid  healing.  From  all  of  which  it  must  be  apparent 
that  in  forming  an  estimate  of  the  danger  or  activity  of  dis- 
ease germs  various  things  have  to  be  taken  into  considera- 
tion, especially  in  regard  to  the  nature  of  the  microbe,  the 
manner  in  which  it  is  received,  the  nidus  where  it  rests,  and 
the  proneness  or  otherwise  of  the  person  at  the  time  to  be 
affected.  A  man  in  vigorous  health,  who  lives  regularly 
and  is  a  slave  to  no  bad  habits,  being  often  well  able  to 
withstand  an  attack  which  would  speedily  invalidate  or  even 
be  fatal  to  one  less  able  to  resist  the  action  of  the  germ. 

I  have  mentioned  incidentally  that  in  malarial  fever  the 
microbe  does  its  work  by  directly  entering  the  blood,  and 
thus  affects  not  any  special  tissue  or  location  as  in  diphtheria, 


30  MICROBES. 


typhoid  fever,  or  pneumonia,  but  the  entire  system,  produ- 
cing the  effects  which  are  so  well  known  in  this  country,  as 
ague  or  chills  and  fever,  intermittent  fever  or  Febris  recur- 
rens.  The  parasite  in  this  instance  has  been  identified.  It 
often  attains  to  a  considerable  size,  varying  from  two  to 
twenty  diameters  of  a  blood  corpuscle.  It  is  a  dark  body, 
containing  a  multitude  of  dark,  round,  movable  granules  and 
a  large  nucleus.  The  cells  divide,  and  one  may  then  be  seen 
to  attach  itself  to  a  blood  corpuscle,  with  which  it  seems  to 
unite  and  to  grow  again  into  another  of  the  large  bodies  first 
mentioned.  This  shows  that  in  malaria  the  parasite  is  not 
only  in  the  blood,  circulating  with  it  throughout  the  tissues, 
but  that  it  actually  eats  up,  as  it  were,  the  corpuscles  them- 
selves, thus  destroying  the  life-giving  energies  of  the  fluid. 
It  has  long  been  known  that  healthy  blood  contains  para- 
sites ;  it  is  only  when  it  contains  others  which  are  injurious 
that  any  evil  results  ensue. 

Microbes  are  taken  into  the  system  in  vast  numbers  with 
food.  I  have  examined  old  canned  goods,  for  example,  and 
sausage  meat,  using  a  one-eighth  inch  homogeneous  objective 
and  C  eye-piece.  Microbes  can  be  detected  at  once,  not  in 
isolated  spots,  but  in  millions,  and  I  have  kept  them  alive  in 
glass  bottles  in  a  suitable  medium  for  six  months  with- 
out any  apparent  loss  of  their  vitality.  It  is  well  known 
that  instances  of  disease  being  produced  by  eating  stale 
canned  meats  are  not  uncommon  ;  they  are,  in  fact,  very 
common,  and  physicians  always  describe  them  as  cases  of 
blood  poisoning,  but  they  never  acknowledge,  if  they  know 
it,  what  the  nature  of  the  poison  is.  Death  frequently 
ensues.  The  real  cause  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the 
microbes  which,  forming  in  the  meat  as  a  result  of  a  chemical 
change,  are  taken  into  the  blood  through  the  stomach. 

Vegetables  in  a  state  of  fermentation  also  produce  disease 
germs,  but  they  are  not  as  dangerous  as  those  which  are 
generated  in  the  animal  tissues.  Nevertheless,  even  they 
sometimes  give  rise  to  diseases  of  the  bowels  or  some 
portion  of  the  alimentary  canal,  and  for  that  reason  Boards 


./•      /<?..'•  '-.  .  *?; 

.: j  ;•;/  ,?  7 


'¥> 


;?- 


, '  .  *'  V^' 

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c  • 


S»     -   .  3^» 


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rf*         0 


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MICROBES  IN  A  STALE  EGG. 


MICROBES  IN  A  STALE  SAUSAGE. 


THE   CAUSE   OF  DISEASE.  31 

of  Health  should  forbid  the  sale  of  fruits  or  vegetables  that 
are  in  a  state  of  fermentation.  Ripe  fruit  is  rarely  injurious. 
To  a  healthy  person  it  is  perhaps  never  harmful,  but  much 
of  the  diarrhoea  and  so-called  cholera,  although  it  is  not 
cholera,  that  prevails  among  children,  especially  in  the  sum- 
mer season,  may  often  be  attributed  to  the  use  of  over-ripe 
fruit,  fruit  in  which  a  process  of  fermentation  has  begun. 
Some  kinds  of  dried  fruits  are  found  likewise  to  be  the  seat 
of  various  forms  of  microbes,  and  experiment  has  shown 
that  except  at  a  high  temperature  their  vitality  is  not 
destroyed ;  yet  it  does  not  appear  that  any  of  these  have 
been  identified  as  disease  germs,  although  the  subject 
presents  room  for  further  investigation. 

From  this  it  will  be  gleaned  that  disease  germs  may  be 
taken  into  the  system  by  food  in  two  ways.  They  may  be 
inherent  in  the  food  itself,  or  they  may  have  become  con- 
veyed to  it  from  the  atmosphere  or  from  contact  with  other 
substances.  The  process  of  cooking  has  a  sterilizing  effect. 
It  tends  to  destroy  germs ;  hence  we  find,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, that  disturbance  is  most  frequent  when  raw  meats 
are  used,  as  they  are  very  largely  by  some  people,  and  where 
uncooked  fruits  and  vegetables  constitute  a  chief  article  of 
diet.  Instances  are  recorded  where  several  persons  have 
partaken  of  the  same  food,  and  only  one  or  two  have  suf- 
fered. This  may  be  explained  on  the  theory  of  superior 
resistance  above  mentioned,  but  also  by  the  fact  that  certain 
microbes  appear  to  increase  in  colonies,  so  to  speak,  whereby 
one  portion  of  meat  may  be  free  from  them  while  another 
portion  is  largely  supplied  with  them.  In  liquids,  such  as 
milk,  they  are  of  course  more  generally  diffused,  and  one 
portion  then  is  as  injurious  as  another. 

Micro-organisms  capable  of  producing  disease  may  come 
to  us  in  meat  without  any  communication  from  outside 
sources,  and  this  is  where  the  public  is  at  the  mercy  of  sani- 
tary inspectors.  Just  as  tubercle  may  be  conveyed  from  an 
unhealthy  cow  through  the  milk  to  a  child,  so  disease  germs 
may  come  direct  from  the  tissues  of  a  diseased  animal,  be 


32  MICROBES. 


taken  into  the  human  system,  and  there  propagate  and  renew 
the  original  affection  or  one  allied  to  it. 

In  an  important  paper  read  before  the  London  Pathologi- 
cal Society  it  has  been  shown  that  tubercle  of  the  udder  is 
very  frequent  among  cows  which  are  in  other  respects 
healthy.  The  milk  is  then  full  of  microbes  and  highly 
infectious,  and  it  is  well  ascertained  that  such  milk  is  the 
cause  of  choleraic  diarrhoea  and  consumption  of  the  bowels 
in  children.  Some  breeds  of  cows  are  more  subject  to 
tubercle  than  others,  and  they  are  usually  those  with  large 
udders  and  which  yield  a  copious  supply  of  milk,  conse- 
quently being  most  sought  after  by  milk  dealers.  A  remedy 
is  at  hand  in  boiling.  Milk  should  be  cooked  as  meat  is,  and 
for  those  who  profess  not  to  like  boiled  milk,  a  little  sugar 
or  salt  added  to  it,  as  may  be  preferred,  will  be  found  to  very 
much  improve  the  flavor. 

It  can  be  well  understood  from  this  that  a  child  may 
acquire  disease  from  a  wet  nurse.  A  case  has  been  recently 
recorded  where  a  perfectly  healthy  child,  born  of  healthy 
parents,  was  given  to  a  woman  to  be  suckled.  Unknown  to 
the  parents,  the  wet  nurse  had  tuberculous  tendencies,  and 
in  a  very  short  time  the  infant  contracted  tubercular  menin- 
gitis and  died.  On  examination  the  nurse's  milk  was  found 
to  contain  tubercle  bacilli,  but  the  discovery  was  made  too 
late.  Other  diseases,  as  well  as  hereditary  taints,  are  liable 
to  be  conveyed  from  wet  nurses  to  children. 

When  cows'  milk  is  used  for  infants,  it  should  not  only  be 
boiled,  but  boiled  thoroughly — that  is,  kept  at  the  necessary 
temperature  for  several  minutes  at  least.  The  custom  too 
prevalent  in  America  of  eating  meat  underdone  or  "  blood 
rare,"  as  its  advocates  delight  to  describe  it,  is  bad  also  and  in 
all  likelihood  dangerous.  Every  form  of  animal  food  should 
be  completely  cooked. 

Thus  then  either  through  the  air  we  breathe,  or  the  food 
we  eat,  or  the  water  that  we  drink,  disease-producing 
microbes  may  be  taken  into  the  system.  There  yet  remains 
another  means — that  of  inoculation.  I  have  found  by 


THE   CAUSE   OF  DISEASE.  33 

actual  experiment  that  if  the  sap  of  a  diseased  plant  be 
removed  to  a  healthy  plant,  the  disease  goes  with  it.  The 
second  plant  soon  falls  into  a  condition  resembling  that 
of  the  first,  and  the  same  symptoms  are  repeated.  So 
it  is  with  man.  The  blood  of  a  sick  person  injected  into  the 
veins  of  one  in  health,  reproduces  the  disease  through  the 
bacteria  that  go  along  with  it.  The  bite  of  a  dog  suffering 
from  hydrophobia  becomes  dangerous  to  man  by  reason  of 
the  microbes  that  are  carried  into  the  system  through  the 
saliva.  The  time  that  is  required  before  their  presence  is 
observable  varies,  but  it  may  be  years.  All  depends  upon 
the  suitability  of  their  surroundings  for  proper  development. 
But  in  time,  unless  checked  by  some  means,  the  blood 
becomes  saturated  with  them,  and  death  after  much  suffer- 
ing ensues  inevitably.  The  doctrine  that  hydrophobia  is 
merely  blood  poisoning  is  simply  absurd  ;  at  any  rate  it 
is  quite  untenable  in  view  of  facts  now  known  to  us.  There 
is  no  danger  in  the  bite  of  a  dog  when  his  saliva  is  free  from 
microbes,  and  this  accounts  for  the  circumstance  that  hun- 
dreds and  thousands  of  persons  are  bitten  by  dogs  every  year 
and  without  experiencing  any  ill  effects.  It  is  true  that  death 
may  ensue  from  the  scratch  inflicted  by  an  old  nail,  or  in 
many  similar  ways,  but  in  all  such  cases  microbes  had  been 
introduced  into  the  system.  Where  injuries  are  received 
and  no  serious  results  follow,  it  is  simply  because  bacteria 
have  been  kept  out  of  the  blood,  and  the  truth  of  this  is  so 
fully  recognized,  that  now  surgeons  adopt  every  means 
known  to  them  to  prevent  the  inoculation  of  wounds  in 
operations  by  any  thing  of  the  kind.  If  a  person  be  pricked 
with  a  needle  that  had  previously  been  passed  into  the 
tissues  of  a  person  afflicted  with  leprosy,  the  disease  will  be 
conveyed  to  him,  through  the  microbes  that  remain  upon 
the  instrument.  I  have  handled  these  microbes,  preserved 
them  in  suitable  media  in  bottles,  observed  their  develop- 
ment day  by  day  under  the  microscope,  watched  their 
action,  seen  the  fermentation  in  the  blood  caused  by  their 
presence,  and  finally  have  observed  the  gradual  decomposi- 
3 


34  MICROBES. 


tion  and  destruction  of  the  fluid  itself.  It  cannot  be 
doubted  that  if  anybody  with  an  abrasion  of  the  skin  comes 
in  contact  with  a  leper,  he  will  have  the  germs  of  the  disease 
conveyed  to  him.  Leprosy  may  not  and  probably  would 
not  develop  immediately,  but  sooner  or  later  it  would 
certainly  come. 

A  paper  was  read  at  the  Dermatological  Congress  at 
Prague  last  year  describing  the  inoculation  of  a  condemned 
criminal  at  Honolulu  with  leprosy.  Briefly  the  case  was 
this.  An  apparently  healthy,  vigorous  man,  without  any 
hereditary  taint,  was  in  September,  1884,  inoculated  with 
lepra  material,  which  had  been  taken  directly  from  a  child 
who  was  the  subject  of  leprosy,  and  who  had  passed  through 
an  attack  of  leprous  fever.  A  small  piece  of  matter  was 
inserted  in  the  left  forearm.  Four  weeks  afterward  pains 
like  those  of  rheumatism  were  experienced  first  in  the  left 
shoulder,  then  in  other  joints  of  the  left  arm,  but  without 
fever.  During  the  next  six  months  inflammation  of  the 
nerves  abated  and  small  leprous  nodules  began  to  appear 
near  the  site  of  inoculation.  At  the  end  of  sixteen  months, 
leprous  bacilli  were  present  in  large  numbers.  In  1887  tne 
symptoms  had  become  general,  and  in  1888,  four  years  after 
inoculation,  the  patient  was  the  subject  of  fully  developed 
leprosy. 

Every  disease  may  be  conveyed  in  this  way,  both  in  plants 
and  animals.  The  familiar  operation  of  vaccination  is  nothing 
more  than  the  conveyance  into  the  system  of  microbes 
pertaining  to  a  mild  form  of  small-pox.  And  the  methods 
pursued  by  Professor  Pasteur  are  identical,  only  he  transfers 
the  microbe  peculiar  to  hydrophobia.  From  what  has  been 
already  said  it  will  be  understood  that  many  alleged  cures 
that  are  put  to  the  credit  of  M.  Pasteur  are  no  cures  at  all, 
because  if  no  microbes  had  been  taken  into  the  wound  no 
evil  consequences  could  ensue,  and  consequently  the  pa- 
tient would  have  had  no  trouble,  even  though  he  had  done 
nothing. 

Readers  of  the  daily  papers  probably  noticed  recently 


THE   CAUSE   OF  DISEASE.  35 

how  a  little  village  in  Massachusetts  had  been  worked  into 
a  state  of  unwonted  excitement  by  a  minister  of  one  of  its 
churches  trying  to  suppress  the  kissing  games  at  sociables 
and  society  meetings.  He  did  this  under  some  sort  of 
sense,  apparently  peculiar  to  himself,  that  kissing  is  im- 
moral. Honi  soit  qui  mal  y  pense,  and  I  fear  that  that 
worthy  pastor  must  at  times  have  had  evil  thoughts.  If  he 
had  objected  to  kissing  on  scientific  grounds  he  would  have 
been  less  severely  criticized  probably,  for  certain  it  is  that 
disease  may  be  conveyed  in  that  way.  Microbes  have  been 
found  in  the  saliva  of  healthy  persons,  and  sometimes  they 
are  unmistakable  disease  germs.  It  would  appear  that  they 
do  not  evince  their  presence  as  long  as  the  person  is  in  good 
health,  or  unless  there  is  any  injury  or  abrasion  of  the 
mucous  membrane.  But  those  conditions  being  present 
they  are  apt  to  produce  suppurative  inflammations  extend- 
ing from  the  lips  down  to  the  pharynx  or  larger  air-passages. 
The  presence  in  moderate  numbers  of  a  peculiar  microbe, 
which  has  much  the  character  of  a  fungus  may  be  normal, 
but  if  it  increases  largely  in  numbers  it  sets  up  inflammatory 
action  as  a  sequel  to  fermentation,  and  disease  of  the  glands 
and  throat  is  the  consequence.  A  patient  suffering  from 
this  may  convey  the  disease  to  any  one  by  being  kissed  on 
the  lips.  It  is  generally  known  that  a  severe  cold  in  the 
head  or  coryza  may  be  transmitted  in  like  manner,  and  in 
common  with  tonsillitis,  quinsy,  sore  throat,  and  other  local 
ailments,  be  the  price  paid  for  this  brief  indulgence.  The 
Princess  Alice,  second  daughter  of  the  Queen  of  England 
and  aunt  to  the  Emperor  of  Germany,  who  died  in  1878, 
incurred  the  disease  which  proved  fatal  to  her  through  a  kiss. 
There  is  an  apparently  slight  affection  of  the  nipple  of  the 
human  breast  which  sometimes  develops  into  cancer.  It  is 
sometimes  hardly  perceptible,  or  only  showing  itself  as  a 
slight  irritation  or  roughness  of  the  skin.  Various  theories 
were  for  many  years  put  forth  to  account  for  it,  and  to 
make  clear  its  true  nature.  But  if  some  of  the  small  scales 
of  the  skin  of  the  part  are  removed  and  placed  on  the  field 


36  MICROBES. 


of  the  microscope  and  treated  with  a  little  bichromate  of 
ammonia,  microbes  at  once  become  apparent.  They  are 
small,  round  bodies,  nearly  the  same  size  as  that  of  the 
epithelial  cells,  and  consist  of  an  outer  membranous  cover- 
ing containing  a  number  of  small  corpuscular  bodies.  In 
incipient  cancer  similar  parasites  may  also  be  discovered. 
Operations  for  this  terrible  disease  fail  because  microbes  are 
not  entirely  removed.  If  only  two  or  three  are  left  behind 
in  apparently  healthy  tissues  they  increase,  and  the  disease 
will  assuredly  return. 

In  the  summer  diarrhoea  of  children  microbes  are  always 
present,  and  they  are  of  various  forms,  but  if  they  in  any 
way  get  upon  an  injury  to  the  skin  they  produce  the  same 
disease.  Injected  into  the  veins  of  animals  they  cause 
drowsiness,  stupor,  convulsions,  and  death. 

I  ought  not  to  omit  all  mention  of  yet  another  possible 
means  by  which  disease  may  be  transferred  by  microbes,  and 
in  which  infective  diseases  could  become  hereditary.  A  vast 
number  of  experiments  has  been  made  in  Europe  to  test 
the  value  of  this  theory.  In  one  instance  a  young  woman 
became  a  mother  while  in  the  most  critical  stage  of  typhoid 
fever.  The  child  died  in  a  few  hours,  and  when  examined 
typhoid  microbes  were  found  in  some  of  its  organs  and 
tissues. 

A  case  has  also  been  reported  from  a  town  in  Iowa  where 
a  young  German  woman,  while  suffering  from  a  severe 
attack  of  measles,  was  delivered  of  a  female  child  before  the 
eighth  month  of  pregnancy,  and  the  infant  at  its  birth  was 
covered  with  the  same  eruption.  It  survived  only  two 
days. 

This  would  seem  to  prove  that  such  organisms  are  con- 
veyable  from  mother  to  child,  but  most  experiments  have 
gone  to  weigh  down  a  negative  proposition.  They  have, 
however,  been  confined  to  a  class  of  complaints  where  the 
microbe  is  acknowledged  to  take  the  prominent  place  in 
causation.  It  is  certain  that  syphilis,  for  example,  may  be 
transmitted  from  parent  to  child,  and  this  is  only  one  of 


MICROBES.  37 


many  that  might  be  cited.  It  is  quite  distinct  from 
mere  hereditary  tendency  to  disease,  which  is  also  fully 
acknowledged. 

The  conveyance  of  disease  germs  to  children  by  means  of 
milk  comes,  in  one  sense,  under  the  head  already  given  of 
the  imbibition  of  microbes  with  food,  but  there  is  a  distinc- 
tion. A  person  taking  typhoid  fever  through  using  impure 
water  is  impregnating  himself  with  microbes  from  a  third 
source,  but  in  the  case  of  the  infant  it  is  taking  the  evil 
directly  from  another  animal.  I  know  of  no  article  of  food 
that  is  better  adapted  than  milk  to  preserve  and  convey 
bacteria.  The  germs  of  cholera  have  been  found  in  milk 
after  standing  for  six  days,  and  they  have,  under  favorable 
circumstances,  shown  activity  at  the  end  of  a  month.  In 
cheese  they  do  not  retain  their  vitality  more  than  twenty- 
four  hours.  The  bacilli  of  typhoid  will  remain  active  in 
milk  for  thirty-five  days,  in  butter  for  about  three  weeks, 
but  only  for  two  days  in  cheese,  and  less  than  twenty-four 
hours  in  whey.  Tubercle  microbes  are  capable  of  develop- 
ment in  milk  after  ten  days,  but  in  butter  they  retain  their 
full  power  for  four  weeks,  and  they  will  live  for  two  weeks 
even  in  whey  and  cheese.  '  Many  remain  full  of  activity  for 
a  considerable  time  in  water.  Some  interesting  experiments 
made  and  frequently  repeated  in  Europe  prove  that  the 
microbes  of  typhoid  fever  will  remain  alive  in  pure  water  for 
periods  varying  from  20  to  80  days  ;  that  of  cholera  from  16 
to  40  days  ;  of  tubercle  from  20  to  118  days  ;  of  glanders  57 
days ;  and  that  found  in  pus  from  a  healing  wound  as  long 
as  73  days.  Some  germs  are  capable  of  increase  in  distilled 
water. 

In  the  course  of  my  experiments  I  once  left  a  glass  slide 
with  a  few  drops  of  water  on  it  over  night  on  my  table,  and 
on  examining  it  the  next  morning  with  a  powerful  objec- 
tive, I  had  certain  evidence  of  the  impure  state  of  the  air  of 
my  room.  I  have  often  repeated  that  observation,  and  to 
my  surprise  I  have  always  been  able  to  detect  the  presence 
of  microbes.  If  they  were  all  disease  germs,  we  could  not 


38  MICROBES. 


live  a  month  ;  but  many  of  them,  indeed,  the  majority,  are 
harmless. 

I  noticed  in  San  Francisco  that  the  dew  that  rests  on 
vegetation  there  in  early  morning  often  contained  a  small 
globular  reddish-colored  microbe,  but  it  was  quite  harmless. 
There  is  a  microbe  in  beer  that  is  likewise  innocuous,  but 
which,  like  the  yeast  plant,  has  its  uses. 

These  facts  are  of  more  importance  than  they  perhaps 
appear  at  first  sight.  In  a  sick  room  the  air  is  more  or  less 
permeated  with  disease  germs.  This  is  especially  true  in 
the  instances  mentioned — cholera,  typhoid  fever,  and  con- 
sumption. Now,  if  in  such  a  room  an  open  vessel  contain- 
ing milk,  or  a  plate  of  butter,  let  me  say,  be  left  about,  it  is 
certain  of  contamination.  Food  of  the  kind  so  affected 
should  not  be  used  therefore.  Yet  how  often  do  we  see 
this  important  point  neglected.  I  may  illustrate  the  same 
thing  in  possibly  a  more  marked  manner.  Suppose  a 
healthy  person  to  be  sleeping  in  a  close  apartment.  If 
a  bowl  of  water  be  placed  on  a  table  and  left  through  the 
night,  it  will  be  found  on  careful  examination  in  the  morn- 
ing to  be  full  of  impurities,  and  to  contain  micro-organisms 
which  were  not  present  the  night  before.  The  larger  the 
exposed  surface  of  water  the  greater  would  be  the  quantity 
of  foreign  matter.  It  is  not  a  bad  plan,  as  may  be  judged 
from  this,  to  keep  such  a  bowl  of  water  throughout  the 
night  in  every  occupied  bedroom. '  It  tends  to  purify  the 
air. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

INOCULATION  AS  A  EROPHYLACTIC. 

IT  is  a  remarkable  fact  in  Nature  that  while  disease  germs 
and  consequently  disease  may  be  conveyed  by  inoculation, 
the  same  process  is  used  to  prevent  disease,  or,  more  cor- 
rectly speaking,  to  mollify  it.  Small-pox  has  been  relieved 
of  much  of  its  terror  by  vaccination,  the  principle  appar- 
ently being  that  a  mild  form  of  certain  affections  renders 
the  system  less  liable  to  a  severe  attack  of  the  same.  It  is 
on  this  that  the  disturbance  caused  by  vaccine  virus  protects 
from  small-pox,  and  M.  Pasteur  follows  it  up  when  he  in- 
oculates for  hydrophobia. 

The  rationale  of  the  process  is  not  understood.  M.  Pas- 
teur has  formulated  a  theory,  but  nothing  more.  He  thinks 
that  the  white  blood  corpuscles  are  concerned  in  it.  He 
supposes  that  the  virus  developed  by  fermentation,  due  to 
the  presence  of  microbes,  first  attacks  those  corpuscles 
whose  activity  is  thereby  soon  arrested.  The  microbe 
continues  to  develop,  and  the  disease  proportionally  ad- 
vances. But  where  the  system  has  been  influenced  by 
previous  injections  of  attenuated  virus  the  white  corpuscles 
have  got  accustomed  to  the  action  of  the  microbes,  and 
thus  their  activity  is  undiminished,  and  they  are  able  to 
overcome  the  action  of  the  parasites.  But  this,  after  all,  is 
but  a  little  circumlocution.  It  merely  states  a  simple  fact 
in  more  words,  and  it  is  as  well  to  acknowledge  at  once  that 
we  do  not  know  precisely  what  the  process  is. 

This  much,  however,  we  do  know :  that  it  is  constantly 
being  acted  upon  by  Nature.  Nothing  is  more  common  in 

39 


40  MICROBES. 


plant  life  than  the  prevention  of  development  of  one  form 
by  another.  Some  of  those  which  we  term  weeds  are 
incapable  of  flourishing  in  the  presence  of  others,  and 
farmers  know  and  take  advantage  of  this  when  they  plant 
a  crop  that  grows  exuberantly  for  the  purpose  of  getting 
rid  of  troublesome  weeds.  The  two  processes  may  not  be 
precisely  the  same,  but  in  principle  they  are,  when  the  soil 
is  by  artificial  process  rendered  unfavorable  to  the  develop- 
ment of  a  particular  growth.  It  has  been  proposed  to 
check  the  inroads  of  yellow-fever  by  similar  means,  but 
whether  this  is  an  advance  in  medical  science  is  not  clear. 
Many  experiments  to  discover  the  microbe  of  yellow-fever 
have  been  illusive,  especially  a  series  conducted  at  Washing- 
ton and  Baltimore.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the  cases  sub- 
mitted for  inquiry  were  genuine  yellow-fever,  and  next 
whether  the  microbes  found  in  the  tissues  examined  had 
any  thing  to  do  with  the  disease.  Nevertheless,  Dr.  Gibier, 
of  Paris,  thinks  that  yellow-fever  may  be  prevented,  or  at 
least  palliated,  by  inoculation.  The  identification  of  the 
"special  microbe  is  not  an  element  in  the  question.  The 
microbe  of  hydrophobia  has  not  been  isolated,  but  no  one 
doubts  its  existence.  In  some  countries  hydrophobia  does 
not  exist.  It  has  never  been  heard  of  in  Australia,  or 
in  some  parts  of  northern  Europe,  and  never  will  be  unless 
it  be  conveyed  to  those  places.  M.  Pasteur  says  unhesi- 
tatingly that  the  so-called  virus  of  the  disease  is  a  microbe, 
and  that  rabies  is  certainly  not  of  spontaneous  origin  ;  but 
he  believes  that  all  virulent  microbes  may  be  attenuated 
and  made  useful  for  inoculation  against  the  severe  forms  of 
the  disease. 

My  own  experience  has  led  me  to  the  conclusion,  which  I 
put  forward  without  any  doubt  as  to  its  accuracy,  that  in 
all  cases  of  disease,  whether  in  plant  or  in  animal,  there  is 
some  form  of  micro-organism  connected  with  it,  and  that 
this  will  increase  and  propagate  itself,  and  that,  too,  when  it 
is  transferred  to  a  healthy  organization  of  the  same  kind. 
If  I  take  seed  from  an  unhealthy,  sickly,  yellowish-looking 


warn 


FRESH  VACCINE  VIRUS. 


VACCINE  VIRUS.     (OLD.) 


INOCULATION  AS  A    PROPHYLACTIC.  41 

plant  and  sow  it,  and  if  it  germinates,  unhealthy,  sickly  and 
yellowish-looking  plants  will  be  the  result.  The  germs  of 
disease  were  there.  "  Rust,"  which  is  common  on  oats  and 
some  other  cereals,  is  nothing  more  than  a  fungus  and 
disease  germ.  Farmers  recognize  this,  and  they  call  for 
rust-proof  seed.  That  does  not  imply  that  the  plants 
grown  from  such  seed  are  not  subject  to  disease,  but  it 
does  mean  that  the  germs  are  not  already  in  the  seed.  It 
means  that  the  seed  is  healthy,  that  it  came  from  healthy 
plants,  and  that  it  contains  no  microbes,  fungi,  or  micro- 
organisms. Acting  upon  similar  knowledge,  he  plants  only 
healthy  potatoes,  he  breeds  his  sheep,  cattle,  and  horses 
only  from  healthy  stock,  and,  in  short,  in  all  his  farming 
operations  he  avoids,  as  far  as  possible,  contact  with  disease 
in  any  and  every  form.  In  doing  this  he  is  simply  avoiding 
the  transfer  of  disease  germs  or  microbes. 

The  same  thing  occurs  in  the  human  race.  It  may  not 
be  going  too  far  to  call  it  a  law  of  Nature,  that  diseased 
parents  have  diseased  offspring,  in  which  case  the  children 
have  inherited  a  constitution  which  favors  the  growth  of 
the  same  microbes,  or  they  have  received  from  their 
mother's  organization  the  actual  germs  which  develop  into 
the  more  active  micro-organisms.  A  florist  takes  his  cut- 
tings only  from  healthy  plants,  because  he  well  knows  that 
if  he  did  not,  either  the  cuttings  would  perish  through  lack 
of  vitality,  or  they  would  produce  diseased  plants  like  those 
from  which  they  were  derived,  and  his  trouble  and  care  in 
raising  them  must  be  increased.  Moreover,  he  perpetuates 
a  disease  by  neglecting  this  precaution,  and  it  may  be  con- 
veyed to  others,  whereas  his  first  consideration  necessarily 
is  to  have  all  his  floral  family  as  free  as  possible  from  every 
deteriorating  influence.  I  have  frequently  noticed  that 
when  rose  cuttings  are  touched  with  even  the  smallest 
particle  of  black  rust  or  other  fungus,  they  are  certain 
to  cause  trouble,  the  rapidity  with  which  the  disease  is 
spread  being  very  remarkable,  and  it  is  difficult  to  stop  it, 
still  less  to  eradicate  it.  The  same  applies  to  the  animal 


\ 

42  MICROBES. 


world,  with  only  this  distinction,  as  a  rule,  that  plants  suffer 
from  fungi  peculiar  to  plants,  while  animals  perish  from 
microbes  peculiar  to  animals.  In  the  many  instances  al- 
ready adverted  to,  as,  for  example,  in  affections  of  the 
alimentary  canal,  where  disease  is  caused  by  the  imbibition 
of  unwholesome  fruit  or  vegetables,  a  process  of  fermenta- 
tion is  first  set  up  which  causes  the  generation  of  microbes 
peculiar  to  the  organization,  which  in  turn  produce  a  special 
abnormal  condition. 

I  do  not  suppose  that  advice  to  people  who  have  already 
made  up  their  minds  to  marry  will  be  likely  to  be  followed. 
The  temporary  madness  which  carries  young  men  and  women 
into  the  bonds  of  matrimony  places  them,  for  a  time,  out- 
side all  influence  of  reason.  They  know  not  what  they  are 
doing.  They  are  being  carried  away  by  a  superhuman  in- 
fatuation, and  they  have  neither  the  time  nor  the  inclination 
to  pause  for  the  reception  of  counsel,  be  it  never  so  wise. 
But  very  often  they  are  rushing  into  an  abyss  which  they 
never  anticipated.  If  they  possessed  their  full  senses  they 
would,  before  entering  upon  the  first  step  towards  matri- 
mony, first  enquire  into  each  other's  healthfulness.  It  is,  in 
truth,  as  important,  and  much  more  so,  as  if  they  were 
about  to  insure  their  lives.  Nay,  they  would  go  farther,  and 
a  sensible  man,  for  instance,  would  not  be  satisfied  to  learn 
that  the  lady  whom  he  contemplated  making  his  second  self 
was  healthy,  but  he  would  ask  about  her  parents  and  her 
grandparents ;  and  she  would  do  the  same  by  him.  Disease 
is  constantly  being  perpetuated  by  injudicious  unions  which 
result  in  the  production  of  diseased  children,  who  thus  con- 
vey the  weakness  onward  through  generations,  in  all  of 
which  the  bacillus,  microbe,  disease  germ,  or  micro-organism 
is  performing  its  special  function,  debilitating  the  mind,  de- 
forming the  body,  disorganizing  the  tissues,  destroying  the 
energies,  lowering  the  standard  of  the  race,  and  bringing 
death.  The  hereditary  character  of  tuberculosis  or  con- 
sumption is  popularly  understood,  but  it  was  long  since 
shown  that  this  disease  is  due  to  a  microbe,  Koch's  bacillus 


INOCULATION  AS  A   PROPHYLACTIC.  43 

which  also  may  in  many  ways  be  conveyed  to  a  healthy 
person.  I  may  here  remind  the  reader  of  the  passage  in 
Scripture  where  punishment  to  the  third  and  fourth  genera- 
tion is  promised  to  those  who  by  forbidden  intermarriages 
promote  disease,  which  they  would  do  by  transference  of 
disease  germs. 

We  often  hear  a  great  deal  about  affinity  in  its  effect 
through  marriage  of  deteriorating  offspring  or  perpetuating 
disease.  Thus  it  is  said  that  intermarriage  of  families 
through  the  second  generation  should  be  avoided,  and  we 
are  told  that  a  degenerate  offspring  necessarily  ensues. 
Experience  says  that  this  is  not  absolutely  true,  although 
it  is  often  justified  by  facts.  Among  the  Hebrews  such 
unions  are  common,  but  the  race  is  prone  to  hereditary 
disease.  No  one  doubts,  however,  that  unions  of  affinity 
are  undesirable,  and  why  ?  The  micro-organisms  which 
produce  disease,  as  I  have  already  shown,  need  congenial 
surroundings  in  which  to  propagate  and  to  flourish.  The 
organism  of  individuals  presents  some  differences  ;  and  one 
person  may  be  a  better  medium  for  the  growth  of  a  partic- 
ular parasite  than  is  another.  This  peculiarity  is  hereditary, 
just  as  facial  expressions  are  hereditary.  Thus  it  is  tolera- 
bly certain  that  two  persons  closely  related,  as  cousins  for 
instance,  possess  to  some  extent  the  same  favorable  condi- 
tions for  the  development  of  a  particular  disease  germ.  If 
they  marry,  these  conditions  are  intensified  in  their  offspring. 
Two  persons  may  have  a  tendency  to  tuberculosis  or  con- 
sumption, which  is  not  in  itself  sufficiently  strong  for  devel- 
opment, but  when  the  combined  tendency  is  found  in  a 
child  it  overcomes  all  other  opposing  influences  and  disease 
and  death  follow.  Two  persons  not  related  may  also  have 
predisposition  to  disease,  but  in  different  forms.  In  that 
case  the  one  might  counteract  the  other,  and  so  a  negative 
result  would  be  brought  about;  but  if  they  did  not  counter- 
act each  other,  both  would  descend  to  the  child,  each  in  a 
mitigated  form, — that  is  neither  being  stronger  than  it  existed 
in  the  parent, — but  at  the  same  time  the  offspring  would 


44  MICROBES. 


inherit  the  weakness  of  both  father  and  mother,  and  thus  its 
susceptibility  to  disease  would  be  increased. 

If  the  same  precautions  were  taken  in  perpetuating  the 
human  family  as  are  taken  in  breeding  the  lower  animals,  we 
should  not  only  attain  to  physical  and  mental  superiority, 
but  we  should  in  all  likelihood  obliterate  the  causes  of  very 
much  disease.  Many  of  the  Australian  sheep-runs  are  far 
larger  than  any  thing  we  have  in  America,  either  in  the 
west  or  in  Texas,  and  the  superiority  of  the  climate  of  that 
great  island  continent  is  specially  adapted  to  the  growth  of 
sheep,  cattle,  and  horses,  who  suffer  from  drought  at  times, 
but  never  from  frost  or  snow.  Sheep  are  the  principal 
product  of  those  great  runs  on  account  of  their  wool,  cattle 
are  used  for  tallow,  and  horses  receive  the  least  attention  of 
the  three,  the  pastures  nearer  to  occupied  territory  being 
reserved  for  the  best  breed  of  horses.  The  consequence  has 
been  that  no  particular  care  has  been  given  to  horse  breed- 
ing in  the  far  interior.  The  first  animals  that  were  taken 
there  were  possibly  any  commonplace  stock  that  served  the 
requisite  purposes  of  stockmen,  shepherds,  or  for  ordinary 
work  around  the  home  station.  By  degrees  these  have  in- 
creased. The  surplus  have  been  turned  out  upon  the  run  to 
shift  for  themselves  over  vast  areas  of  grass  land,  and  to 
breed  indiscriminately.  They  have  increased  to  such  an 
extent  that  large  herds  of  horses  are  now  to  be  met  with  in 
some  parts  of  the  interior,  but  most  of  them  are  worthless. 
They  have  deteriorated  in  all  the  qualities  that  are  looked 
for  by  the  horse  buyer  in  the  markets,  and  so  far  as  can  be 
learned,  an  old  horse  is  rarely  if  ever  met  with.  They 
appear  to  suffer  from  some  inherited  disease,  or  they  are 
more  susceptible  to  disease  than  animals  that  are  more  care- 
fully bred  usually  are  found  to  be.  These  horses  are  occa- 
sionally to  be  met  with  in  the  markets  of  Melbourne  or 
Sydney,  where  they  may  be  bought  for  about  five  or  six 
dollars  each  when  two  or  three  years  old. 

Now  the  system  which  we  find  to  produce  such  deteriorat- 
ing consequences  in  horses,  is  exactly  that  which  we  are 


INOCULATION  AS  A   PROPHYLACTIC.  45 

carrying  out  every  day  and  from  year's  end  to  year's  end 
in  the  propagation  of  mankind.  We  follow  not  the  course 
that  gives  us  a  Hanover  or  an  Ormonde,  but  that  which  in 
two  or  three  generations  runs  down  the  value  of  a  horse 
from  five  hundred  or  a  thousand  dollars  to  five.  In  the 
human  family  we  cannot  follow  the  methods  under  which 
the  English  race-horse  of  the  present  day  has  been  devel- 
oped, but  we  might  find  it  not  so  difficult  to  guard  against 
the  propagation  of  disease.  Let  every  man  marry  none  but 
a  healthy  woman,  and  let  every  woman  be  careful  to  select 
none  but  a  healthy  husband,  and  much  disease,  deformity 
of  mind  as  well  as  body,  and  general  debility  would  be 
avoided,  and  in  course  of  time  killed  out.  No  hereditary 
disease  owing  its  existence  to  micro-organisms  could  possi- 
bly be  continued.  But  where  one  or  both  parents  has  the 
germs  of  disease,  the  offspring  is  not  only  liable  but  is 
almost  certain  to  be  sickly  and  unhealthy,  and  the  doctor 
will  be  called  simply  to  watch  their  downward  progress 
towards  dissolution — victims  of  disease  germs  and  of  a 
process  of  fermentation. 


CHAPTER   V. 

HABITAT   OF   DISEASE   GERMS. 

FORMS  of  vegetation,  and  also  of  animal  life,  vary  in 
different  latitudes.  The  fauna  and  flora  of  the  tropics  bear 
no  resemblance  to  the  animals  and  plants  that  have  their 
home  in  temperate  zones,  and  in  like  manner  the  micro- 
organisms, fungi,  and  microbes  of  various  parts  of  the  earth 
have  distinct  characteristics. 

Some  plants  can  be  transferred  from  the  places  where 
they  are  indigenous,  and  they  can  be  grown  and  made  to 
flourish  in  places  which  are  quite  foreign  to  them  ;  others 
will  only  vegetate  in  their  native  home  and  they  perish 
when  transferred  to  another  region.  The  same  applies  to 
animals,  not  only  to  the  larger  but  to  the  microscopic  mem- 
bers of  the  animal  kingdom.  The  bacillus  of  Koch  cannot 
live  in  air.  It  can  subsist  and  reproduce  itself  only  in  the 
organism.  The  yellow-fever  germ  likewise  requires  certain 
climatic  conditions,  as  is  well  known,  in  order  to  propagate 
rapidly  and  produce  disease.  When  those  climatic  or  at- 
mospheric conditions  do  not  exist,  the  germs  perish  and  the 
disease  dies  out.  The  regions  where  it  is  most  prevalent  in 
this  hemisphere,  and  it  is  worse  here  than  elsewhere,  are 
the  Isthmus  of  Panama  and  some  parts  of  Mexico  and 
Cuba,  though  Louisiana  and  other  portions  of  the  United 
States,  as  is  well  known,  are  subject  to  it ;  but  in  the  latitude 
of  New  York,  even  on  the  sea  border,  it  is  comparatively 
harmless,  the  microbes  ceasing  their  activity  almost  on  en- 
tering the  harbor  of  New  York. 

46 


HABITAT  OF  DISEASE   GERMS.  47 

Yellow-fever  is  acutely  infectious.  The  microbes  are  in 
the  atmosphere.  That  is  their  primary  characteristic.  But 
under  favorable  conditions,  which  are  not  yet  accurately 
defined,  though  they  probably  are  due  to  local  impurities  in 
the  soil,  the  disease  becomes  contagious  and  endemic,  as  it 
ordinarily  is  at  Colon  and  Panama.  The  differences  thus 
noted  are  due  no  doubt  merely  to  varying  degrees  of 
activity  or  vitality  of  the  microbes.  The  worst  form  of  the 
disease  is  found  at  Panama,  and  there  no  condition  of 
health  is  sufficient  to  ward  off  the  attack.  The  old  and  the 
young  are  alike  affected.  Persons  in  robust  health  may  be 
struck  down  sooner  than  those  whose  appearance  would 
indicate  a  less  power  of  resistance,  and  so  powerful  is  the 
micro-organism  that  causes  it,  so  rapidly  do  they  multiply, 
and  so  actively  do  they  operate  to  bring  about  a  fermenta- 
tion and  destruction  of  the  blood  that  a  few  hours  some- 
times suffices  to  bring  death.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that, 
notwithstanding  the  energy  of  the  bacillus  the  mortality 
among  children  is  less  than  among  adults.  What  does  this 
show  ?  How  can  it  be  accounted  for  ?  Easily  enough  on 
the  theory  that  there  is  something  in  the  adult  system  to 
favor  the  growth  of  the  microbe  which  does  not  exist  to  the 
same  degree  in  the  constitution  of  children  before  the  age 
of  puberty. 

The  microbe  of  cholera  is  different  from  that  of  yellow- 
fever,  but  it  is  equally  energetic  in  growth  and  action,  and 
causes  death  quite  as  rapidly.  Both  probably  arise  from  the 
same  source,  though  in  different  parts  of  the  world,  and  in 
that  respect  they  are  not  unlikely  to  resemble  the  common 
microbe  of  summer  diarrhoea.  This  has  been  ascertained  to 
exist  in  the  superficial  layers  of  the  earth,  whence  it  may 
extend  to  water  or  to  the  various  articles  used  as  food,  the 
vital  manifestations  of  such  micro-organisms  depending  on 
conditions  of  season,  heat,  and  moisture,  and  on  the  presence 
of  dead  organic  matter,  animal  or  vegetable,  or  both.  The 
microbe  so  produced  may  pass  likewise  into  the  atmosphere, 
whence  undoubtedly  it  causes  its  evil  effects  in  the  three 


48  MICROBES. 


diseases  under  consideration.  Thus  it  passes  into  the  sys- 
tem, where  it  brings  about  a  process  of  fermentation  or 
decomposition,  producing  changes  that  result  in  giving  the 
symptoms  noticed  in  yellow-fever,  cholera,  and  diarrhoea. 
The  microbe  is  not  the  same  in  the  three  cases,  but  it  may 
be  similar,  and  certainly  it  may  be  produced  in  a  like  man- 
ner in  a  similar  nidus  and  on  a  corresponding  pabulum. 
But  in  the  one  it  flourishes  in  Panama  and  Havana,  in  the 
other  in  Asia,  and  in  the  third  in  New  York,  or  anywhere  if 
due  regard  be  not  paid  to  drainage  and  to  general  sanitary 
requirements. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  germs  of  the  atmos- 
phere are  essentially  different  from  those  in  the  soil  or 
in  vegetables  or  animal  matter.  The  latter  constitute  the 
nidus  or  place  in  which  they  are  originated,  and  there,  too, 
they  find  the  pabulum,  or  food  on  which  they  thrive,  but  the 
same  may  quite  readily  be  passed  into  the  atmosphere,  to 
float  away  to  another  place,  then  to  increase  and  multiply 
according  to  the  universal  law  of  nature.  The  motes  that 
are  visible  in  the  line  of  a  sunbeam  are  often  mere  particles 
of  lifeless  matter,  but  often,  too,  they  are  minute  organisms, 
with  more  or  less  power  for  mischief  as  soon  as  they  fall 
upon  a  place  that  is  suitable  to  their  growth  and  development. 

Many  plants  have  seeds  that  are  furnished  with  a  feathery 
structure  which  facilitates  the  action  of  the  wind  to  raise  them 
in  the  air  and  waft  them  sometimes  many  miles  away  from 
the  spot  where  they  grew.  The  thistle  and  dandelion  are 
familiar  illustrations  of  these.  On  my  grounds  at  Austin  I 
made  some  fish-ponds,  and  in  one  of  them  fish  made  their 
appearance,  apparently  spontaneously,  certainly  without 
my  introducing  any.  All  were  quite  small,  as  though  re- 
cently hatched.  How  did  they  come  there  ?  Is  it  not 
possible  that  the  spawn  might  have  been  carried  by  high 
winds  or  water  fowl  ?  I  certainly  think  so,  and  I  believe 
also  that  the  careful  observer  of  Nature  will  agree  with  me. 

The  microbe  that  gives  rise  to  Chagres  fever  is  similar  to, 
though  not  identical  with,  that  of  yellow-fever,  and  it  has 


HABITAT  OF  DISEASE   GERMS.  49 

the  same  habitat,  but  it  is  even  more  delicate,  and  it  perishes 
as  soon  as  it  is  taken  away  from  the  neighborhood  of  its  early 
development.  The  microbe  of  leprosy  is  another  example  in 
the  other  direction,  for  although  it  is  chiefly  at  home  in  parts 
of  eastern  Europe,  western  Asia,  and  some  of  the  islands  of 
the  South  Pacific,  it  manages  to  live  in  other  climates,  though 
not  with  a  like  degree  of  activity  and  vigor. 

The  greatest  variety  in  vegetation  is  found  in  the  tropics ; 
there,  too,  we  find  the  greatest  variety  of  animals,  and  logi- 
cally we  should  expect  to  find  there — and  we  actually  do 
find — the  greatest  variety  of  fungoid  growths,  microbes,  and 
micro-organisms.  Warmth  and  heat  are  favorable  to  organic 
life,  but  with  the  increased  development  of  that,  we  see  also 
an  increased  development  of  disease.  The  temperate  zone 
produces  fewer  microbes,  and  it  also  generates  a  higher  physi- 
cal excellence  and  more  perfect  health  to  resist  their  action, 
hence  follows  a  minimum  of  disease,  so  far  at  least  as  the 
habits  of  people  and  the  requirements  of  society  permit. 

In  the  tropics  there  is  not  only  a  higher  development  of 
micro-organisms,  both  animal  and  vegetable,  but  also  a 
lower  power  of  resistance  in  the  human  frame,  and,  in 
consequence,  a  larger  amount  of  disease,  especially  of  those 
forms  of  disease  where  changes  in  the  blood  are  brought 
about  by  fermentative  processes,  through  the  presence  of 
microbes,  in  the  shortest  and  most  thorough  manner.  It  is 
a  matter  of  common  experience  that,  if  we  go  south  in  this 
country,  malaria  and  diseases  allied  to  it  are  more  frequent 
there,  especially  in  swampy  districts,  than  they  would  be  in 
similar  localities  in  Canada.  There  ague  is  scarcely  known  ; 
and  if  we  pass  to  Australia,  where  the  vegetation  is  immedi- 
ately antagonistic  to  the  growth  of  microbes,  ague  is  un- 
known. A  physician,  who  has  been  a  resident  of  that 
country  for  nearly  fifteen  years,  and  who  has  travelled  over 
many  thousand  miles  of  it,  tells  me  that  he  never  met  with 
a  case  of  intermittent  fever  there,  and  never  heard  of  one. 

Two  centuries  ago  ague  was  one  of  the  most  common 
diseases  in  England,  and  also  one  of  the  most  fatal.  Some 
4 


50  MICROBES. 


of  her  kings  and  many  members  of  the  royal  family  died  of 
it ;  but  as  the  population  increased  and  opened  up  the  land, 
as  agriculture  improved  and  drainage  of  the  soil  became 
general,  it  gradually  disappeared,  until  in  this  century  it  had 
become  limited  to  the  low  lands  of  Norfolk  and  Hunting- 
donshire, and  in  these,  as  a  consequence  of  still  more  perfect 
drainage,  it  is  becoming  yet  more  rare,  and  always  less  fatal. 

But  take  another  picture.  By  actual  survey,  made  under 
government  authority,  it  is  found  that  two  thirds  of  the 
peninsula  of  Florida  are  under  water,  covered  by  slowly 
flowing  rivers,  lakes,  lagoons,  and  swamps.  The  whole 
atmosphere  there  is  malarial.  A  high  form  of  intermittent 
fever  may  not  be  very  marked,  but  most  of  the  inhabitants 
show  symptoms  of  suffering  from  that  cause,  and  evince 
nervous  excitement  and  irritability,  physical  weakness,  loss 
of  mental  equanimity  and  force,  and  all  the  other  marks  of 
an  unwholesome,  microbic  atmosphere.  If  the  country  could 
be  drained,  which  unfortunately  is  impossible,  the  health  of 
the  people  would  be  entirely  changed.  In  one  sense  it  is 
fortunate  that  the  soil  is  poor — 95  per  cent,  sand, — so  that 
it  is  almost  as  unfavorable  a  nidus  for  microbes  and  fungi 
as  it  is  for  the  ordinary  crops  of  the  farmer.  If  the  soil  were 
rich,  Florida  would  hardly  be  endurable  for  white  men,  for 
the  heat  and  moisture  of  the  atmosphere  would  render  it  a 
most  perfect  nidus  for  dangerous  vegetation,  and  the  un- 
healthiness  of  Panama  would  most  likely  be  extended 
to  our  country.  Florida  is  now  one  of  the  most  unhealthy 
States  in  the  Union. 

Notwithstanding  all  this,  the  limit  where  microbes  cannot 
exist  has  not  been  discovered.  Possibly  there  may  be  some 
line  in  the  northern  and  southern  hemispheres  beyond 
which  micro-organisms'  are  not  found  in  the  atmosphere, 
although  it  is  difficult  to  suppose,  indeed  it  cannot  be 
supposed,  that  they  do  not  exist  on  the  earth  wherever 
higher  forms  of  animal  life  are  in  existence.  They  may  not 
be  as  numerous  nor  as  full  of  vitality,  and  hence  not  as  dan- 
gerous, but  they  are  there.  At  the  same  time,  if  we  wish  to 


CELLS  OF  THE  YEAST  PLANT. 


SPORES  OF  FUNGUS  ON  A  RIPE  ORANGE. 


HABITAT  OF  DISEASE   GERMS.  51 

propagate  them  we  find  that  the  most  favorable  conditions 
are  warmth,  moisture,  and  frequently  a  deficiency  of  sun- 
light. It  is  too  much  a  custom  among  Americans  to  close 
up  their  houses,  excluding  light  and  air  alike.  But  what  I 
have  said  shows  the  folly  of  such  habits.  Sunlight  purifies 
the  air,  and  while  it  aids  the  higher  forms  of  vegetation,  it  is 
apt  to  destroy  fungoid  growths :  not,  however,  by  its  direct 
influence,  which  is  always  salutary,  but  by  withholding  the 
moisture  that  is  necessary  to  micro-organic  production. 

Some  interesting  experiments  on  this  subject  have  been 
made  by  M.  Duclaux  on  various  forms  of  microbe,  and  he 
states  that  exposure  to  the  sun's  rays  for  a  few  hours 
sufficed  to  destroy  their  vitality,  or  at  any  rate  to  arrest 
their  activity.  This  is  doubtless  true;  at  the  same  time  the 
absence  of  moisture  tends  to  accellerate  such  a  result.  Throw 
a  wet  dress  into  a  trunk,  and  mildew  or  some  form  of  fungus 
will  form  upon  it.  Hang  it  above  the  ground,  where  it  can 
receive  air  and  sunshine,  and  no  such  result  ensues. 

In  hot  and  dry  countries,  such  as  New  Mexico  or  Arizona, 
meat  may  be  hung  in  the  hot  sun  and  it  merely  drys  and  re- 
mains fit  for  food.  But  let  the  atmosphere  be  moist,  under 
similar  conditions,  and  fermentation  soon  begins,  leading 
up  to  putrefaction. 

Florists  suffer  considerably  in  damp,  sultry  weather,  when 
there  is  no  sunlight,  from  injury  done  to  their  plants  by 
fungi.  Seedlings  "  damp  off,"  which  means  that  fungi 
appear  upon  their  leaves,  check  their  growth,  and  ulti- 
mately kill  them.  The  camellia  japonica  is  especially  liable 
to  this.  In  like  manner  newly-cut  oats  that  become  wet 
before  harvesting  are  surely  affected  in  the  same  way,  and 
unless  promptly  attended  to  they  speedily  rot. 

Vinegar  is  the  result  of  a  fermentative  process  brought 
about  by  the  action  of  a  microbe,  but  a  warm  temperature 
is  necessary.  The  preparation  of  bread  with  yeast  is  again 
a  fermentation,  the  active  agent  being  a  vegetable  formation 
known  popularly  as  the  yeast-plant.  By  its  growth  and  in- 
crease in  the  bulk  of  the  material,  carbonic-acid  gas  is 


52  MICROBES. 


formed,  which  mechanically  "  raises "  the  dough.  Many 
years  ago  it  was  suggested  that  the  gas  might  be  produced 
by  chemical  means,  and  so  the  use  of  yeast  would  be  ren- 
dered unnecessary.  This  was  done  at  first  by  dividing  the 
dough  into  two  portions,  adding  dilute  nitric  acid  to  one 
and  carbonate  of  soda  to  the  other,  then  mixing  them 
thoroughly.  A  chemical  decomposition  took  place,  the  gas 
caused  the  dough  to  rise,  and  a  very  excellent  bread 
resulted.  This,  which  at  the  time  was  merely  a  laboratory 
experiment,  led,  at  no  distant  day,  to  the  introduction  of 
baking  powders,  but  it  is  noteworthy  that  bread  produced 
by  the  use  of  yeast  is  still  the  most  satisfactory  and  the 
most  wholesome,  the  action  of  the  yeast-plant  being  more 
gradual  and  leaving  no  chemical  salt  behind. 

Meat  spoils  more  readily  in. a  warm  and  close  room  than 
when  exposed  to  the  air  or  to  cold.  In  those  parts  of 
Europe  where  the  winters  are  cold  without  severe  frost,  as, 
for  example,  in  England,  it  is  not  unusual  to  hang  meat  in 
places  where  a  free  current  of  air  can  be  obtained  at  all 
times,  and  it  remains  in  that  position  for  perhaps  five  or  six 
weeks,  according  to  the  weather.  It  is  not  "  spoiled."  On 
the  contrary,  it  becomes  tender  and  acquires  a  flavor  which 
epicures  admire.  This  cannot  be  done  where  the  meat 
freezes,  and  in  a  warm  unventilated  place  it  would  become 
unfit  for  food  in  a  very  few  hours.  The  cause  of  this  is  the 
formation  of  a  micro-organism  the  result  of  fermentation  or 
decomposition.  Of  course  I  exclude  reference  to  the  injury 
that  may  be  done  by  insects,  the  effect  referred  to  implying 
no  other  influence  than  such  as  is  derived  from  contact  with 
the  atmosphere,  and  the  germs  contained  in  it. 

Watch  Nature,  observe  her  operations,  pause  and  think 
over  them,  and  many  useful  lessons  will  be  learned,  many 
old  prejudices  swept  away,  and  numberless  errors  will  be 
corrected.  Mere  book-readers  are  theorists  ;  Nature's  readers 
are  practical.  The  former  are  apt  to  take  for  granted  what 
others  tell  them  ;  the  latter  judge  for  themselves.  Theorists 
work  blindly ;  they  cannot  see  what  they  may,  and  will  not 


SPORES  AND  FUNGI  ON  BREAD. 


FUNGUS  ON  A  RIPE  STRAWBERRY. 


HABITAT  OF  DISEASE   GERMS.  53 

see  what  they  should.  They  may  stumble  over  things,  but 
they  refuse  to  accept  truths  which  Nature  constantly  holds 
up  before  them,  and  it  is  in  this  way  that  processes 
that  are  recognized  in  some  things  are  ignored  in  others, 
because  they  seem  to  be  at  variance  with  theory.  The  full 
importance  of  fermentation,  its  general  recurrence  in  various 
processes  of  Nature,  and  the  import  of  micro-organisms  and 
microbes  in  the  causation  of  natural  phenomena,  among 
which  the  production  of  diseased  conditions  is  not  the  least 
important,  have  never  been  hitherto  adequately  acknowl- 
edged ;  and  it  is  because  observation  has  been  too  little 
made  and  theory  has  occupied  men's  minds.  I  have 
sufficiently  outlined  the  true  cause  of  disease.  The  in- 
stances I  have  given  should  suffice  to  satisfy  any  one  who 
is  free  from  prejudice  and  from  the  cobwebs  of  the  old 
school  of  teachers.  They  are  not  beyond  the  reach  of 
ordinary  intelligences.  Nature,  in  her  operations,  abhors 
complicated  processes.  She  works  by  simple  methods,  and 
her  laws  are  as  wide-reaching  as  they  are  simple.  She  does 
not  devise  some  complicated  plan  for  producing  one  par- 
ticular disease,  and  then  set  to  work  to  arrange  another 
cause  for  a  second  form  of  sickness.  On  the  contrary,  she 
lays  down  certain  broad  rules  upon  which  all  operations  are 
conducted.  These  rules  apply  to  both  kingdoms  of  organic 
life  with  results  that  are  only  modified  by  circumstances  of 
each.  If  they  are  not  respected,  trouble  ensues.  Resistance 
brings  about  catastrophe,  and  even  neglect  of  their  opera- 
tion has  its  perils.  But  when  we  know  what  we  have 
to  accomplish,  a  great  part  of  our  difficulty  is  cleared  away. 
Directly  we  are  informed  as  to  the  cause  of  a  disease,  the 
chief  obstacle  to  finding  a  remedy  is  removed.  But  if  we 
enter  upon  the  investigation  blinded  with  tradition  and  with 
book-reading  only,  it  stands  to  reason  that  the  greatest 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  discovering  a  remedy  are  presented. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

FAILURE   OF   MEDICAL   SCIENCE. 

WHY  medicine  fails  to.  cure  disease  is  a  proposition  that 
we  have  all,  at  some  time  or  other,  probably  asked  ourselves. 
It  is  an  important  problem,  and  one  that  should  be  solved. 
But,  at  the  outset,  I  am  reminded  of  a  question  which,  it  is 
said,  was  once  proposed  to  the  Roman  senators :  "  Why  does 
a  pail  of  water  with  a  fish  swimming  in  it  weigh  no  more 
than  the  same  pail  of  water  without  the  fish  ?  "  It  is  said 
that  a  long  discussion  took  place  over  this,  and  that  various 
explanations  were  suggested,  until  some  one  fell  back  on 
experiment,  and  then  it  was  discovered  that  the  water  with 
the  fish  in  it  did  weigh  more. 

So,  in  the  question,  why  does  medicine  fail  to  cure  disease? 
I  may  be  required  to  show  first  that  it  does  fail.  I  have  no 
objection  to  this ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  a  logical  and  a 
proper  way  to  proceed,  clearing  as  we  go.  At  the  same 
time,  the  too  frequent  failure  of  medicine  as  a  science  must 
be  evident  to  every  observer.  We  have  no  right  to  ask  that 
the  doctors  shall  cure  under  all  circumstances  and  all  condi- 
tions. If  they  did  that,  life  would  be  perpetual  and  death 
impossible,  and  that  would  be  a  subversion  of  Nature's  laws. 
But  we  all  know  quite  well  that  medicine  fails  when  we  are 
justified  in  looking  for  success.  Physicians  themselves  are 
aware  that,  while  their  best  talent  and  abilities  may  be  given 
to  a  patient,  he  nevertheless  dies,  and  often  they  live  to 
look  back  upon  the  case  with  regrets  that,  with  increased 
knowledge,  a  different  result  might  have  been  attained. 

54 


FAILURE   OF  MEDICAL   SCIENCE.  55 

It  is  acknowledged  by  its  disciples  that  medical  science 
has  made  great  progress  during  the  past  half-century,  and 
that  it  is  still  advancing  year  by  year.  This  shows  at  least 
that  is  is  not  an  exact  science — that  is,  not  perfect,  but  that 
new  discoveries  can  be  made,  changes  can  be  effected,  and, 
possibly,  what  is  now  considered  excellent  may  erelong  be 
discarded  in  practice  for  something  that  is  at  present  un- 
known, or  at  any  rate  unaccepted.  It  follows,  therefore, 
that,  if  the  door  for  improvement  be  open,  nobody  should 
be  precluded  from  entering  because  only  he  happens  to  be 
not  one  of  the  elect. 

No  day  passes  but  illustrations  occur  everywhere  of  the 
fact  that  medicine  fails  to  cure,  and  that  too,  where  failure 
should  be  impossible.  The  reason  of  this  is  what  I  propose 
to  elucidate,  and,  in  order  to  do  it,  it  is  of  little  use  to 
theorize.  We  must  discover  facts ;  we  must  look  at  the 
matter  in  a  practical  way,  and  endeavor  to  deal  with  it  so 
that  it  can  be  readily  understood  by  any  one  who  wants 
something  more  than  a  string  of  technicalities. 

The  reader  has  probably  indulged  in  the  perusal  of  medi- 
cal books  which  tell  him  how  to  cure  himself,  or  he  has  con- 
sulted his  doctor  and  received  information  from  him,  or  he 
may  have  read  something  about  family  medicines.  Most  of 
the  books  which  attempt  to  popularize  these  subjects  are 
pernicious.  They  give  symptoms  and  remedies.  They  draw 
the  usual  differences  between  ailments,  and  define  particular 
remedies  for  each.  They  treat  disease  with  hard  and  fast 
lines,  ignoring  the  power  of  the  physician's  discernment  and 
the  subtle  evidences  which  only  an  accomplished  doctor  can 
detect.  People  who  read  them  are  prone  to  imagine  them- 
selves afflicted  with  symptoms  that  they  see  described,  and 
many  get  up  from  their  perusal  convinced  that  they  have 
cancer,  or  Bright's  disease,  or  consumption,  or  heart  trouble, 
when,  in  truth,  they,  have  nothing  whatever  the  matter  with 
them,  or,  at  most,  a  disordered  stomach. 

From  my  point  of  view  they  are  yet  more  pernicious, 
being  bad  not  only  in  their  consequences,  but  in  their  prin- 


56  MICROBES, 


ciples.  For  the  position  I  take  is  entirely  at  variance  with 
that  which  the  advice  of  the  usual  family  physician  supports. 
My  discovery,  as  may  be  gleaned  from  what  I  have  already 
said,  is  entirely  different  from  any  thing  that  has  ever  been 
introduced  from  the  beginning  to  the  present  day  for  the 
purpose  of  curing  disease.  My  proposition  is  simple,  but  it 
comes  from  study  and  observation  of  Nature.  I  have  found 
that  all  disease  may  be  concentrated  under  one  head.  It 
may  assume  different  forms  in  different  persons.  It  may  be 
known,  for  instance,  as  fever  in  one,  pneumonia  in  another, 
diphtheria  in  a  third,  cholera  or  diarrhoea  in  a  fourth,  and  so 
on.  But  the  differences  which  give  rise  to  the  necessity  for 
using  such  names  are  merely  details.  There  is,  in  truth,  but 
one  disease.  It  develops  in  various  ways.  It  produces  dif- 
ferent symptoms,  all  of  which  are  dependent  on  conditions, 
some  of  which  may  readily  be  defined.  But,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, disease  is  uniform.  And  just  as  there  is  actually  but 
one  disease,  so  there  is  but  one  cause  of  disease,  and  that 
may  be  limited  in  the  common  acceptation  of  the  one  word 
"decay."  But  what  is  decay?  The  visible  result  of  fer- 
mentation. And  what  is  fermentation  ?  The  phenomena 
produced  in  organic  matter  by  the  action  of  microbes. 

In  this  consideration,  and  for  all  practical  purposes,  it  is 
quite  immaterial  to  know  the  peculiarity  of  the  microbe  that 
we  find  in  any  particular  instance.  It  may  be  interesting  to 
the  close  observer  to  watch  the  forms  and  mode  of  evolu- 
tion of  these  little  creatures,  and  it  may  be  satisfactory  so 
to  differentiate  their  forms  and  habits  as  to  be  able  to  clas- 
sify and  to  name  them.  But  this  does  not  affect  the  mode 
of  cure.  A  microbe  is  a  microbe.  The  same  treatment 
affects  them,  the  same  curative  agent  kills  them,  whatever 
their  form  or  whatever  be  the  effects  which  they  produce. 
The  only  difference  that  we  notice  is  in  regard  to  time, 
some  ailments  being  more  readily  reached  than  others. 

It  is  not  of  so  much  consequence  to  the  farmer  to  know 
what  weeds  are  in  his  cornfield,  as  it  is  to  learn  the  best 
means  of  cutting  them  down  and  keeping  them  out  of  his 


FAILURE   OF  MEDICAL   SCIENCE.  57 

crops.  He  need  not  be  a  botanist.  He  does  not  require  to 
know  the  natural  order  and  the  generic  and  specific  names 
of  a  plant  before  he  puts  the  hoe  to  it ;  nor  does  he  pause 
to  learn  the  construction  of  its  fibres  and  the  character  of 
its  cells.  He  merely  recognizes  it  as  a  noxious  plant,  and 
he  destroys  it.  Neither  is  it  of  much  consequence  to  him  to 
know  that  weeds  are  not  all  alike.  It  is  enough  to  be  sure 
that  they  are  weeds,  and  he  applies  the  same  remedy  to  get 
them  out  of  the  way.  If  his  crops  look  yellow,  or  show  evi- 
dences of  rust  and  disease,  he  does  not  go  to  his  study,  to 
his  microscope  and  his  books  in  order  to  satisfy  himself  what 
sort  of  microbe  or  fungus  it  is  that  is  endangering  his  prop- 
erty, but  he  goes  to  work  in  a  practical  manner  to  cure  the 
disease  and  to  rid  himself  of  the  pest.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  learn  the  particular  character  of  the  fungi  that  he  sees 
on  his  plants,  his  fences,  his  timber,  or  his  house ;  all  he 
wants  is  to  be  convinced  that  they  are  there,  and  that  they 
are  injurious,  and  he  immediately  tries  to  find  out  and  to 
apply  the  remedy  for  their  destruction. 

Let  me  not  be  misunderstood.  I  have  not  a  word  against 
scientific  investigation.  I  understand  too  well  its  value.  I 
would  not  disparage  the  spirit  which  leads  to  a  close  exami- 
nation of  the  minutest  of  Nature's  works.  On  the  contrary, 
I  am  interested  in  their  description.  I  prize  the  work  which 
shows  me  their  distinctive  peculiarities  of  structure,  form, 
size,  properties,  mode  of  existence  and  development ;  and  I 
appreciate  the  patience  and  the  skill  of  those  who  pursue 
such  a  course  of  investigation,  and  are  capable  of  arranging 
for  scientific  purposes  these  most  wonderful  organisms.  I 
make  frequent  use  of  that  knowledge  in  these  pages,  and 
fully  acknowledge  its  abounding  interest.  But,  at  the  same 
time,  I  hold  that,  for  purposes  of  curing  only  the  diseases  to 
which  the  human  body  is  subject,  it  is  not  necessary  that  we 
should  know  the  form,  size,  development  and  classification 
of  the  microbes  that  produce  disease.  There  may  be  one  or 
a  dozen,  each  producing  its  own  symptoms,  or  affecting  dif- 
ferent parts.  You  do  not  stop  to  examine  them,  and,  give 


58  MICROBES. 


them  their  place  in  the  lists  of  science ;  you  only  ask  how  to 
get  rid  of  them,  how  to  restore  the  health  and  preserve  the 
body  from  their  depredations.  To  delay  for  the  sake  of 
diagnosis  is  simply  to  waste  valuable  time.  It  is  one  of  the 
errors  of  so-called  scientific  medicine,  and  should  have  noth- 
ing to  do  with  the  cure.  The  thing  of  all  importance  is  the 
remedy.  I  am  acquainted  with  a  large  number  of  various 
forms  of  disease  in  plants,  but  I  do  not  know  all,  and  I 
could  never  learn  to  know  them,  because  the  micro-organisms 
hybridize  and  produce  new  forms,  and,  of  course,  each  one 
exhibits  some  different  characteristics  in  habit  and  results, 
while  they  have  their  special  pabulum,  some  being  found  in 
large  plants  or  large  animals  and  others,  in  small  ones.  This 
I  purpose  to  demonstrate  by  practical  evidence  derived  from 
observation  of  Nature,  and  I  shall  certainly  be  able  to  sus- 
tain the  truth  of  my  position.  So  much  has  been  written 
which  cannot  be  proved,  so  many  promises  are  made  which 
cannot  be  kept,  and  in  various  ways  the  people  are  held  so 
much  in  ignorance  of  things  which  they  ought  to  know,  that 
their  confidence  is  weakened  in  all.  They  have  been  blind- 
folded and  led  astray  so  often  that  they  distrust  everybody 
who  offers  to  enlighten  and  lead  them,  however  much  he 
knows  himself  to  be  in  the  right.  But  facts  should  convince, 
and  I  think  I  can  in  every  instance  produce  facts  to  prove 
all  that  I  claim. 

I  wish  this  to  be  distinctly  understood.  I  set  no  value 
on  theory.  My  studies  have  been  practical.  The  ground- 
work of  my  discoveries  is  in  observation.  I  take  nothing 
which  I  cannot  prove,  nothing  which  is  not  appreciable  to 
the  senses.  I  rely  entirely  upon  facts  to  sustain  the  value 
of  what  I  have  done.  I  do  not  claim  that  the  field  I  have 
wrought  in  is  untrodden.  Thousands  of  investigators  and 
of  the  brightest  intellects  in  the  world  are  at  work  in  it. 
The  problem  of  how  to  stop  fermentation,  to  destroy  fungi, 
and  to  prevent  the  appearance  and  neutralize  the  develop- 
ment and  operation  of  microbes  is  being  well  handled,  but 
the  solution  is  here. 


FAILURE   OF  MEDICAL    SCIENCE.  59 

We  paint  our  houses  not  only  because  they  look  better 
painted,  but  because  the  process  preserves  them  from  decay. 
The  paint  checks  or  stops  the  development  of  micro-organ- 
isms, which  find  their  favorite  resting-place  in  wood,  brick, 
or  stone,  and  the  best  material  of  that  kind  is  the  one  which 
most  certainly  produces  such  result.  The  painter  or  builder 
does  not  stop  to  inquire  the  nature  of  the  fungus  that 
threatens  him.  He  does  not  trouble  himself  about  a  scien- 
tific investigation.  He  knows  that  there  is  a  danger  to  be 
met ;  he  knows  how  to  meet  it ;  he  understands  the  remedy 
to  be  applied,  and  he  applies  it.  He  is  also  well  aware  that 
the  oftener  he  applies  it,  and  the  more  effective  he  makes 
the  application,  the  better  will  he  preserve  his  property. 
One  coat  of  paint  is  useful,  but  several  are  necessary.  The 
matter  requires  constant  attention.  The  steady  repetition 
of  the  remedy  alone  secures  all  the  advantage  and  makes 
the  protection  perfect. 

In  this  direction  there  are  several  resources  at  our  com- 
mand, discovered,  not  by  medical  science,  but  by  practical 
experimenters,  and  people  of  common-sen^e  and  practical 
inclinations.  For  example,  the  desirability  of  protecting 
railroad  ties  from  decay  has  been  answered  by  applications 
of  hot  tar,  creosote,  and  allied  substances.  Soluble  silica 
has  been  driven  into  their  substances  by  atmospheric  or 
hydraulic  pressure  for  the  same  purpose.  In  India  it  is 
hardly  possible  to  preserve  telegraph  poles  and  railroad  ties 
from  destruction,  and  iron  has,  in  most  instances,  been  sub- 
stituted. Fences  are  also  made  of  iron  in  that  country. 
There  is  one  observation,  however,  which  it  is  worth  while 
to  mention.  It  has  been  found  that  the  wooden  ties  on  a 
road  where  trains  are  frequent  are  less  subject  to  injury  than 
those  not  in  use.  This  is  attributed  to  vibration,  and,  if  the 
explanation  be  correct,  it  opens  out  a  field  for  inquiry. 

On  the  same  principle  upon  which  tar  and  creosote  are 
applied  to  timber  do  we  submit  meat  to  the  effects  of  wood 
smoke.  This  permeates  the  substance,  kills  microbes,  and 
of  course  prevents  their  development.  It  would  indeed  be 


60  MICROBES. 


easy  to  cite  thousands  of  cases  where  applications  of  a  more 
or  less  poisonous  character  are  used,  which  would  kill  not 
only  microbes  but  every  living  thing,  whether  animal  or 
vegetable.  The  embalming  of  bodies,  now  so  fashionable, 
is  nothing  more  than  a  use  of  poisonous  solutions  calculated 
to  prevent  the  process  of  decomposition  or  fermentation, 
and  many  of  the  so-called  remedies  used  by  physicians  to 
treat  disease  are  likewise  of  a  highly  poisonous  character. 
Sometimes  what  seem  to  be  simple  and  harmless  remedies 
are  not  so.  An  Italian  physician  has  recently  suggested  the 
use  of  sulphur  in  the  treatment  of  typhoid  fever,  but  in 
enormous  doses  frequently  repeated.  He  would  also  cover 
the  patient  and  the  bedclothes  with  sulphur,  and,  to  the 
ordinary  reader,  this  may  seem  a  very  innocent  remedy. 
But  chemical  changes  take  place,  and  the  well-known  yellow 
powder  is  converted  into  very  energetic  compounds,  and  it 
then  becomes  a  question  whether  the  microbes  or  the  patient 
will  die  first.  That  is  all.  Again,  many  of  the  compounds 
advertised  for  popular  application  are  extremely  dangerous, 
and  too  much  caution  cannot  be  exercised  in  their  use, 
though  people  who  are  wise  will  leave  such  things  alone 
altogether,  and  fall  back  upon  those  only  which  are  known 
not  to  be  injurious. 

The  pharmacist  may  look  with  pride  upon  his  well-filled 
shelves,  where  arsenic  and  corrosive  sublimate  stand  side  by 
side  with  morphia,  carbolic  acid,  laudanum,  nux  vomica, 
chloral,  creosote,  chloroform,  and  a  host  of  similar  prepara- 
tions, all  of  which  are  used  by  physicians  to  kill  microbes, 
or,  as  they  say,  to  cure  disease.  And  these  things  do  kill 
microbes,  but  not  until  the  blood  and  the  tissues  are  satu- 
rated with  them,  and  then  the  effect  is  not  for  a  day  but  for 
ever.  No  one  denies  that  we  can  kill  microbes  in  the  human 
system  by  soaking  the  body  with  poisonous  substances,  just 
as  the  embalmer  attains  a  similar  end  by  similar  means,  but  it 
is  at  the  cost  of  the  patient's  life.  The  body  may  be  filled 
throughout — the  blood,  bones,  muscles,  nerves,  all  the  tis- 
sues, may  be  filled  with  a  poisonous  antiseptic,  just  as  the  rail- 


SCROFULA   PUSTULES. 


TUBKRCLE.     (PARIS.) 


FAILURE   OF  MEDICAL   SCIENCE.  6 1 

road  tie  may  be  permeated  with  creosote  or  silicic  acid,  and 
assuredly  the  microbes  will  be  killed  and  their  propagation 
will  be  rendered  impossible,  but  the  body  will  be  killed,  too. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  railroad  tie  be  not  thoroughly 
soaked,  it  will  not  be  preserved,  while  the  body,  if  not  effec- 
tually saturated  with  poison,  will  not  be  freed  from  microbes, 
and,  consequently,  will  not  be  put  out  of  danger.  That  is 
the  dilemma  in  which  any  person  is  who  places  himself  at 
the  mercy  of  medical  science  as  it  is  practised.  The  remedy 
is  worse  than  the  disease.  If  he  does  not  die  of  the  one  he 
does  of  the  other,  or,  if  he  gets  well,  it  is  because  his  system 
was  superior  to  both.  The  only  escape  that  he  has  is  to 
find  something  which,  while  it  effectually  destroys  microbes 
and  prevents  fermentation,  does  not  act  injuriously  upon  the 
bodily  organization.  It  is  useless  to  take  a  small  quantity 
of  a  poison  which  is  insufficient  to  kill  the  microbe,  and  it 
is  fatal  to  take  a  larger  amount,  which,  while  staying  the 
disease,  is  itself  destructive. 

This  argument  seems  clear,  and  every  one's  common-sense 
must  tell  them  that  it  is  sound,  yet  people  go  on  taking 
poisonous  drugs  and  compounds,  and  they  will  swallow  any 
thing  that  comes  to  them  with  the  authority  of  a  medical 
diploma,  or  of  a  person  who  writes  M.D.  after  his  name. 
Rarely,  indeed,  do  they  stop  to  ask  whether  those  magical 
letters  have  any  intrinsic  value.  They  forget  even  that 
there  are  doctors  and  doctors.  The  druggist  on  the  corner 
is  dubbed  a  doctor,  and  the  boy  who  sweeps  out  the  store  is 
known  among  his  acquaintances  as  doctor.  Then  there  are 
horse  and  cattle  doctors,  tooth  doctors,  corn  doctors,  nail 
doctors,  not  to  mention  divinity  doctors,  bone  doctors, 
philosophy  doctors,  and  a  host  besides.  But,  in  good  sooth, 
the  doctor  of  medicine  need  not  know  any  thing.  Medical 
colleges  are  a  multitude.  They  compete  with  each  other  to 
try  which  can  get  the  most  students.  They  accept  anybody, 
educated  or  uneducated,  so  long  as  he  can  pay  the  fees. 
They  make  his  work  as  light  as  possible,  and  the  require- 
ments for  a  degree  as  easy  as  possible.  And  when  they  have 


62  MICROBES. 


received  all  the  money  that  their  scheme  requires  they  make 
the  lad  a  Doctor  of  Medicine  full-fledged,  and  send  him  out 
into  the  world  with  a  license  to  kill,  which  is  all  that  he  can 
do  with  any  certainty.  The  bills  of  mortality  testify  to  the 
wickedness  of  such  a  system,  and  show  only  too  plainly  that 
persons  who  are  entitled  by  law  to  call  themselves  physicians 
do  fail. 

It  is  doubly  unfortunate  that  many  of  these  persons  have 
no  such  right,  so  careless  is  the  law-making  power  in  this 
country,  for  in  Europe  medical  education  is  something  very 
real,  and  a  physician  or  a  surgeon  in  Germany,  England,  or 
France  is  bound  to  be  a  man  of  considerable  degree  of 
scientific  attainment.  For  years  past  a  profitable  business 
has  been  done  here  in  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  bogus 
medical  degrees,  of  which  Vermont  has  been  the  centre. 
These  vary  in  price  from  five  to  a  hundred  dollars,  but  no 
reasonable  offer  is  refused.  The  applicant  need  have  no 
knowledge  of  medicine.  He  may  be  unable  to  distinguish 
arsenic  from  chalk,  or  strychnine  from  either.  He  wants 
only  the  amount  of  money  necessary  to  pay  for  the  parch- 
ment, and  he  can  be  dubbed  a  doctor  of  medicine  on  short 
notice. 

A  foreign  physician  travelling  through  the  Northern 
States  visited  Montpelier,  Vermont.  There  a  young  doctor, 
to  whom  he  had  been  introduced,  requested  him  to  visit 
with  himself  a  case  of  "  canker  rash."  The  request  was 
willingly  complied  with,  for,  to  the  foreigner,  "  canker  rash  " 
was  a  new  disease — he  had  never  heard  of  it, — and  his  curi- 
osity was  aroused.  It  was  a  case  of  ordinary  scarlet-fever. 
Some  time  after,  when  the  acquaintanceship  between  the 
two  physicians  had  developed,  the  question  was  asked  why 
scarlet-fever  was  called  "  canker  rash."  "  Oh,"  said  the  young 
Green-Mountain  doctor,  "  when  we  don't  know  whether  a 
case  is  one  of  scarlet-fever  or  measles,  we  call  it  canker 
rash."  The  same  man  boasted  that  his  degree  of  M.D., 
which  he  had  procured  from  Vermont  College,  had  cost  him 
only  three  hundred  dollars  and  nine  months  in  time,  during 


FAILURE   OF  MEDICAL   SCIENCE.  63 

which  he  earned  his  living  by  working  as  a  carpenter !  Is 
there  much  room  for  wonder  that  "  physicians  "  do  not  cure 
disease  ? 

Under  the  American  system  of  medical  education  very 
few  physicians  can  write  a  prescription  correctly.  Druggists' 
books  tell  strange  tales,  and  the  public  little  know  how  much 
they  are  indebted  to  intelligent  pharmacists  for  correcting 
the  errors  and  making  good  the  shortcomings  of  the  family 
doctor. 

The  fault  for  this  rests  as  much  with  the  people  as  with 
the  profession.  The  law  prescribes  no  standard  for  the 
physician's  education.  It  provides  no  means  whereby  his 
competency  may  be  tested.  He  goes  for  examination  before 
the  men  who  have  been  his  teachers,  and  whose  interests 
are  to  pass  him  and  grant  him  his  diploma.  They  have  no 
inducement  whatever  to  regard  the  public  welfare,  and  many 
young  men  go  out  from  American  medical  schools  with  no 
more  medical  knowledge  than  they  had  of  general  education 
when  they  attended  their  first  lecture.  The  three  essentials 
for  a  competent  physican  and  surgeon,  to  wit :  a  sound  gen- 
eral and  classical  education,  the  training  and  feelings  of  a 
gentleman,  and  thorough  practical  and  theoretical  knowledge 
of  all  science  and  art  that  can  alone  justify  a  man  in  hold- 
ing the  lives  of  others  in  his  hands,  are  not  insisted  upon  in 
any  medical  college  in  the  country.  If  they  were  universal, 
as  they  ought  to  be,  such  a  display  of  ignorance  as  will  be 
found  in  the  appendix,  quoted  from  an  examination  in 
Virginia,  would  not  be  possible. 

The  doctors  themselves  understand  all  this,  and  they  are 
careful  to  keep  people  in  ignorance  as  far  as  possible  of  the 
laws  and  operations  of  Nature.  Directly  a  man  learns  how 
to  cure  himself  he  has  no  need  for  a  doctor,  but,  so  long  as 
he  is  kept  in  the  dark  as  to  the  nature  of  disease  and  the 
means  by  which  he  could  relieve  himself  of  it,  he  is  at  the 
mercy  of  the  physician.  Sickness  is  something  incompre- 
hensible to  him,  and  he  goes  for  help  because  he  knows  no 
better.  In  many  instances  the  doctor  is  as  ignorant  as  his 


64  MICROBES. 


patient,  and  knows  no  more  of  the  real  nature  of  the  disease 
than  if  he  had  never  had  a  college  diploma.  He  works, 
then,  absolutely  in  the  dark.  He  is  as  likely  to  use  medi- 
cines that  do  harm  as  he  is  to  fall  upon  such  as  might  prove 
useful.  He  is  certain  of  nothing.  If  the  patient  recovers, 
he  claims  the  credit  and  his  bill.  If  the  patient  dies,  he 
writes  a  certificate  for  the  Board  of  Health,  demands  his 
pay,  and  goes  to  work  again  on  somebody  else. 

But,  under  the  standard  of  humanity,  this  glorious  profes- 
sion has  united  into  an  organization  which  demands  that  all 
who  desire  to  share  its  privileges  shall  declare  not  to  depart 
from  orthodox  teachings,  but  to  follow  in  certain  tracks,  and 
adhere  to  specific  principles,  which  are  already  laid  down. 
If  other  persons  interfere,  or  attempt  to  open  the  eyes  of 
the  people  to  a  true  knowledge  of  things,  they  insist  that 
their  rights  are  interfered  with,  that  the  public  interests  are 
being  endangered,  and  the  safety  of  the  people  imperilled, 
and  forthwith  they  ask  for  laws  to  protect  themselves — and 
they  get  them.  They  become  a  corporation  barricaded  by 
the  courts  and  the  Legislature,  forbidding  the  education  of 
the  people  in  natural  things  that  concern  them  intimately, 
dictating  what  shall  be  done  in  questions  of  life  and  death, 
laying  down  routine  methods,  and  guarding  themselves 
against  all  responsibility  when  their  dictatorial  system  fails 
to  render  the  benefit  that  everybody  has  a  right  to  look  for. 
This  is  done  in  the  cause  of  medical  science,  as  it  is  called ; 
it  is  done  with  the  excuse  that  the  people  need  to  be  pro- 
tected against  ignorance,  and  that  the  public  health  is  some- 
thing too  sacred  to  be  left  in  charge  of  unauthorized  practi- 
tioners. Yet  this  same  corporation  permits  young  men  to 
go  forth  every  year,  with  authority  given  on  a  piece  of 
parchment  to  compound  drugs,  to  administer  powerful 
poisons,  to  hold  the  lives  of  the  people  in  their  hands,  while 
they  are  themselves  absolutely  unqualified  for  any  responsi- 
bility whatever  of  the  kind.  They  have  no  experience,  no 
knowledge;  they  have  merely  paid  certain  fees,  and  had  ex- 
plained to  them  what  are  called  the  ethics  of  professional 


FAILURE   OF  MEDICAL   SCIENCE.  65 

life.  They  go  forth  to  trade  upon  the  ignorance  of  the 
people,  to  work  upon  their  fears,  to  play  a  part  of  mystery 
and  deception,  and  to  send  thousands  to  their  graves  who, 
under  a  more  liberal  system,  would  be  restored  from  disease 
to  health,  and  to  their  families  and  their  occupations. 

Books  and  papers  published  by  the  profession  are  not 
intended  to  enlighten  the  public,  but  to  strengthen  the 
doctors  within  their  own  fortress,  to  monopolize  the  power 
which  they  have  secured  to  themselves  by  the  law  and  by  a 
force  of  rigid  organization.  True,  there  are  books  some- 
times published  by  members  of  the  profession  ostensibly  for 
public  use,  but  they  are  of  no  value.  Pretending  to  convey 
popular  instruction,  they  stop  just  at  the  place  where 
knowledge  is  most  needed,  and  they  leave  the  reader  still  at 
the  mercy  of  the  consulting  physician.  Moreover,  they  are 
prepared  by  men  who  still  follow  the  routine  and  use  the 
same  agencies  of  the  incorporated  body  to  which  they 
belong,  and,  where  they  are  not  absolutely  misleading,  the 
inquirer  finds  them  to  be  far  from  instructive  in  any  practi- 
cal manner.  Then,  again,  there  are  men  who  also  hold  the 
paper  which  authorizes  them  to  dub  themselves  doctors  of 
medicine  who  publish  books  to  prey  upon  the  fears  as  well 
as  upon  the  ignorance  of  those  who  read  them.  These 
adventurers  use  the  mails  for  disseminating  disgusting  circu- 
lars wherewith  to  entrap  their  victims.  They  offer  remedies 
which  they  do  not  possess.  They  draw  large  sums  of 
money  every  year  from  their  victims,  and,  for  some  mysteri- 
ous reason,  the  law  does  not  interfere  with  them  in  their 
nefarious  business.  These  people  pretend  to  cure  disease, 
knowing  that  their  pretence  is  fraudulent.  They  claim  to 
diagnose  a  case,  and  they  send  the  same  type-written  diagnosis 
to  everybody  who  is  foolish  enough  to  go  to  them.  They 
secure  money  for  purposes  which  they  have  no  intention  to 
carry  out,  and  thus  place  themselves  on  a  level  with  the 
"  green-goods  man,"  who  promises  to  send  counterfeit  bills, 
and  forwards  instead  a  box  of  sawdust.  Yet  the  doctors 
who  do  these  things  are  still  allowed  to  remain  within  the 
5 


66  MICROBES. 


organization  of  the  profession,  and  to  kill  and  defraud  under 
the  protection  of  a  diploma. 

I  have  no  fear  that  the  many  able,  learned,  and  progressive 
men  that  the  medical  profession  numbers  among  its  mem- 
bers will  read  these  strictures  as  applying  to  them.  I  have 
no  contention  with  physicians,  many  of  whom  are  my  most 
favorable  critics ;  but  I  war  against  bad  methods  and  false 
principles.  The  newspaper  reporter  who,  for  notoriety  and 
pay,  states  a  subjective  case  to  different  physicians,  and 
then  publishes  their  confidential  opinions  (vide  appendix), 
deserves  but  little  credit.  If  her  object  be  to  ridicule  the 
doctors,  she  fails ;  if  it  be  to  accentuate  the  modern  craze 
for  sensationalism,  and  to  show  that  it  must  be  fed  even  at 
the  cost  of  impertinence  and  to  the  discredit  of  journalism, 
she  succeeds.  The  profession  is  itself  to  blame  for  any  lack 
of  confidence  that  the  public  may  have,  because  it  admits 
so  much  incompetency  to  its  ranks,  and  so  often  shows  itself 
as  preying  upon  ignorance,  which  it  encourages,  and  in  an 
illiberal  treatment  of  outside  persons,  whom  it  affects  to 
ignore. 


*:*•  •  * 


•* 


CANCER— FROM  THE  PANCREAS. 


rm&T  .-f  r>^ 


CANCER  OF  THE  BREAST.  (PARIS.) 


CHAPTER   VII. 

PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES. 

THE  diseases  enumerated  by  physicians  would  probably 
run  into  thousands,  and,  to  cure  all  these  various  forms, 
there  are  drugs  which  would  also  run  into  thousands.  No 
ordinary  person  can  understand  all  these.  It  requires  one 
to  be  specially  instructed,  and  to  have  devoted  his  life  to 
the  study,  and  then  he  only  knows  how  to  diagnose  an  ail- 
ment, that  is,  how  to  classify  it  in  the  list  which  has  been 
artificially  made  and  put  before  him.  He  does  not  cure 
When  a  cure  is  effected,  it  is  due  to  other  causes,  not  cer- 
tainly to  the  poisonous  drugs  that  have  been  administered. 
And  when  one  of  these  physicians,  eminent  in  his  way  and 
among  his  fellows,  becomes  ill,  say  with  cancer,  or  consump- 
tion, or  dropsy,  his  faculty  fails  him  ;  he  dies,  and  the  disease 
of  which  he  died  is  called  incurable.  Take  the  cases  of 
General  Grant,  of  John  Roach,  of  the  Emperor  of  Germany. 
They  were  in  the  hands  of  the  most  reputable  physicians 
within  reach.  No  gold  could  save  them ;  and  so  it  is,  the 
rich  and  the  poor  run  the  same  risk,  under  the  system  of 
medical  organization  and  "  eminent  doctors."  And  all  this 
is  a  logical,  a  necessary  sequence  to  ignorance  of  Nature's 
laws  and  Natural  processes.  He  who  would  cure  himself 
and  others  must  study  Nature,  and  examine  the  processes 
by  which  Nature  creates  and  destroys.  It  is  useless  to  work 
upon  artificial  methods.  Disease  is  a  reality.  It  cannot  be 
got  rid  of  by  any  theoretical  processes.  It  does  not  call  for 
complicated  devices.  But  it  must  be  dealt  with  in  a  practi- 

67 


68  MICROBES. 


cal  manner.  We  are  bringing  ourselves  face  to  face  with 
Nature  when  we  seek  to  cure  disease.  Hence,  we  must 
learn  her  ways,  and  be  guided  by  the  knowledge  so  attained. 
It  is  of  no  use  to  go  aside  to  form  fancies  of  our  own.  They 
are  useless.  Nature  teaches  us  what  to  do,  and  to  contend 
against  her  is  only  to  defeat  our  own  purpose. 

Although,  as  I  have  said,  constant  change  is  one  of  the 
laws  of  the  universe,  yet  we  must  acknowledge  that  very 
much  of  the  disease  and  many  of  the  ailments  that  trouble 
and  vex  us  are  due  to  man  himself.  They  are  not  a  part  of 
the  original  plan  of  the  world.  The  mind  at  once  suggests 
to  itself  many  which  are  well  known  to  be  the  result  of 
man's  irregularities,  excesses,  or  neglect,  and  physicians, 
with  their  wider  experience,  can  add  greatly  to  the  number. 
As  a  general  rule,  Nature  starts  in  all  her  works  from  a 
healthy  basis.  This  does  not  mean  that  all  created  organ- 
isms are,  in  the  first  instance,  pathologically  perfect,  but  it 
does  mean  that  disease  in  any  and  every  form  is  an  abnormal 
condition.  It  is  a  diversion  from  the  direct  principle  of 
Nature.  Vegetation  produced  from  healthful  seeds  is  itself 
healthy,  and  the  same  rule  applies  to  animals,  of  which  man 
is  only  one.  Native  races  that  live  in  a  primitive  condition 
suffer  far  less  from  disease  than  do  the  luxurious  and  pam- 
pered children  of  a  high  civilization.  The  aborigine  of  this 
country,  who  is  erroneously  spoken  of  as  an  "  Indian,"  is 
afflicted  with  diseases,  through  contact  with  the  white  man, 
which  he  did  not  know  of  when  he  exercised  his  rightful 
ownership  of  the  country  unmolested.  The  native  who 
roams  without  shelter  or  clothing  over  the  vast  domain  of 
Australia,  enjoys  the  most  vigorous  health  that  his  slender 
living  will  allow.  The  laws  compel  him,  when  he  visits  a 
town  or  village,  to  wear  a  blanket,  and,  in  due  time,  the 
changes  of  covering  himself  to-day  and  going -nude  to-mor- 
row, result,  in  most  instances,  in  speedy  death  by  pneumonia 
or  consumption.  The  introduction  of  spirituous  liquors 
among  aboriginal  tribes  is  not  the  only,  or  even  the  principal, 
factor  in  their  disappearance.  There  are  very  few  sections 


PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES.  69 

of  the  human  family  where  fermented  drinks  were  not  in  use 
long  before  the  intrusion  of  white  men.  Where  wise  policy 
has  prevailed,  as  among  the  Maoris  under  British  rule,  the 
native  race  has  taken  its  place  and  held  its  own,  not  only  in 
the  circles  of  labor  and  commerce,  but  in  legislation,  and 
very  much  of  its  native  vigor  is  maintained  by  the  customs 
of  healthy  out-door  exercise  and  the  use  of  plain  food.  It 
seems  anomalous,  yet  it  is  true,  that  the  farther  we  reach 
into  the  influence  of  civilization,  the  farther  we  depart  from 
Nature,  and  the  greater  becomes  the  tendency  to  debility 
and  disease.  Luxury  breeds  effeminacy,  but  it  also  predis- 
poses to  sickness,  and  many  of  the  most  troublesome  ail- 
ments are  due  to  it,  even  as  they  are  absolutely  unknown 
to  the  denizen  of  the  primeval  forest,  or  to  his  unpolished 

descendant  in  the  wilds  of  the  earth. 

• 

Nor  does  it  seem  that  the  human  frame  accustoms  itself 
to  this  artificial  life.  Although  continuing  for  generations, 
and  even  for  centuries,  under  the  same  influence,  it  never 
resumes  its  pristine  invulnerability  to  the  attacks  of  physical 
ailments.  Susceptibility  to  disease  remains  ;  instead  of  sub- 
siding it  becomes  hereditary,  and  so  luxury  and  culture  levy 
their  tax  upon  the  body.  The  farm  laborer  of  England,  the 
peasant  of  Germany  or  France,  with  his  healthful  life, 
peaceful  surroundings  and  contentment,  plain  living,  and 
freedom  from  care,  enjoys  a  freedom  from  disease  and  a 
hardy  power  of  resistance  to  its  causes  which  the  pampered 
victim  of  wealth  and  social  necessities  never  knows. 

I  will  now  proceed  to  sketch  my  own  experiences,  from 
early  life  till  the  present,  and  the  reader  who  will  patiently 
follow  me  throughout  will  have  no  difficulty  in  realizing  that 
the  discovery  I  have  made  cannot  fail  to  effect  a  revolution 
in  the  treatment  and  cure  of  disease.  The  causes  of  disease 
in  plants  and  animals  have  been  already  described ;  I  pro- 
pose now  to  detail  my  methods  for  curing  plants,  and  then 
give  evidence  concerning  the  means  I  have  used  for  effecting 
cures  in  myself  and  others. 

While  engaged  in  business  with  my  nursery  in  Austin, 


70  MICROBES. 


Texas,  I  suffered  from  an  attack  of  malaria,  or  intermittent 
fever,  and  I  had  recourse  to  several  doctors,  who,  in  the 
usual  way,  prescribed  for  me  various  drugs.  I  swallowed 
the  contents  of  bottle  after  bottle,  until  their  number  be- 
came too  great  for  calculation.  I  took  quinine  until  it  failed 
to  have  any  effect.  I  lost  color  and  weight,  and  was  afflicted 
with  an  incessant  cough,  that  destroyed  my  rest,  wore  away 
my  strength,  and  led  me  and  my  friends  to  the  conviction 
that  I  was  soon  to  become  a  victim  to  consumption.  My 
days  seemed  numbered.  All  hope  of  a  cure  was  abandoned. 
Every  thing  that  had  been  done  by  the  doctors  had  failed. 
Their  efforts  seemed  to  be  utterly  useless.  Instead  of  get- 
ting better,  I  gradually  became  worse.  I  lost  energy  and 
the  capacity  to  attend  to  my  affairs.  Every  resource  known 
to  the  doctors  thus  far  had  been  used,  and  my  life  seemed 
to  be  passing  away,  so  that  but  a  short  thne  only  was  needed 
to  determine  the  result.  In  this  emergency  I  resorted  to 
another  doctor,  who  advised  me  to  try  the  rarefied  air  of 
Colorado,  high  up  in  the  mountains,  where  the  atmosphere 
is  supposed  to  be  purer  and  free  from  the  debilitating 
influences  of  the  plains.  This  I  could  not  do,  nor  do  I  feel 
sure  that  I  would  have  done  it  if  I  had  been  able.  The 
demands  of  my  business  forbade  my  leaving  home,  and  then 
I  had  never  seen  any  one  return  from  Colorado  who  had 
been  cured  of  consumption,  which  my  friends  feared  for  me. 
My  condition  was,  nevertheless,  desperate.  The  malarial 
fever  had  affected  me  for  seventeen  years,  during  the  last 
two  of  which  it  had  been  complicated  with  sciatica  and 
articular  rheumatism,  and  I  had  become  literally  a  physical 
wreck.  It  can  well  be  understood  that,  amid  such  long  suf- 
fering, and  the  total  failure  of  doctors  to  afford  me  the 
necessary  relief,  I  had  made  myself  acquainted  with  all 
advertised  remedies  and  proprietary  medicines.  Still  the 
physicians  did  not  leave  me.  They  were  my  constant  visi- 
tors, prescribing  one  thing  to-day  and  another  to-morrow, 
only  to  discover  that  every  new  prescription  was,  like  its 
predecessor,  a  failure.  Two  years  before  I  discovered  the 


PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES.  *J\ 

microbe-killer,  I  lost  two  children — a  boy  and  a  girl.  They 
had  not  been  strong.  They  were  brought  up  by  hand,  my 
wife  being  too  weak  to  nurse  them.  Microbes  affected  the 
milk,  which,  in  turn,  carried  disease  to  the  stomachs  of  the 
infants.  They  became  ill.  Their  stomachs  presently  re- 
fused food.  Paregoric,  soothing-syrup,  and  all  the  remedies 
that  the  doctors  could  devise  from  their  drug-lists  were  tried 
without  effect,  and  the  children  died.  The  medicines  killed 
them,  and  the  reasons  I  shall  be  prepared  to  explain. 

This  loss  distracted  my  attention  from  my  business.  Up 
to  that  time  I  had  devoted  myself  closely  to  my  business 
as  a  gardener.  All  books  and  literature  of  my  occupation  I 
read.  I  was  an  earnest  subscriber  to  every  floral  magazine 
that  came  within  my  knowledge,  for  I  always  found  in  them 
something  that  was  useful  and  instructive.  I  am  anxious  to 
give  full  credit  to  such  publications,  for  I  am  much  indebted 
to  them,  since  it  was  in  them  that  I  found  the  first  hints 
which  led  me  on  to  experiments,  and  hence  to  the  discovery 
of  a  certain  and  safe  means  of  killing  fungi  and  microbes. 
They  kept  me  to  the  study  of  Nature.  No  medical  work  or 
magazine  would  do  that.  None  of  them  ever  directed  me 
to  natural  sources,  but,  on  the  contrary,  whenever  I  took 
one  up  it  diverted  me  from  the  line  of  my  researches,  dis- 
turbed the  tenor  of  my  investigations,  and  confused  my 
ideas. 

Medical  papers  would  tell  me  the  symptoms  of  fever  or 
rheumatism  or  diphtheria.  They  would  describe  the  microbe 
of  typhoid,  compare  it  with  the  microbe  of  other  diseases, 
explain  its  mode  and  rapidity  of  propagation,  sketch  its 
appearance  under  the  microscope,  classify  it,  and  name  it, 
but  they  would  not  tell  how  to  kill  it.  The  symptoms  which 
I  saw  in  print  were  better  understood  by  me  in  my  body. 
One  who  has  had  itching  piles  can  certainly  comprehend 
the  evidences  and  feelings  better  than  one  who  merely  writes 
or  reads  about  them.  When  I  arose  in  the  morning  I  knew 
that  I  had  no  energy,  that  I  felt  more  tired  than  when  I 
went  to  bed.  When  I  walked  I  knew  that  I  felt  as  though 


72  MICROBES. 


there  were  twenty  pounds  of  lead  tied  to  my  feet.  When  I 
drove  to  my  seed-store  I  knew  that  I  could  sit  only  on  the 
edge  of  my  buggy,  because  the  microbes  would  not  let  me 
sit  any  other  way,  and  when  I  stepped  to  the  ground  I  knew 
that  it  took  me  several  minutes  before  I  could  move,  the 
microbes  that  produced  sciatica  and  rheumatism  objecting 
to  being  disturbed,  and  so  preventing  me.  Every  attempt 
to  move  had  to  be  slow  and  deliberate,  until  they  should 
get  accustomed  to  the  change.  I  was  a  living  barometer. 
Whenever  the  weather  altered,  and  especially  if  it  became 
cooler,  my  collection  of  microbes  could  anticipate  it  two  or 
three  days,  and,  when  the  storm  came,  they  would  freeze, 
and  force  me  to  take  refuge  by  a  red-hot  stove  to  get  them 
quieted. 

The  inevitable  result  of  all  this  was  clear.  I  had  no  par- 
ticular wish  to  leave  the  world.  It  is  a  pleasant  enough 
place  to  be  in,  provided  a  man  has  health  and  some  little 
necessaries.  It  is  possible  to  imagine  that  there  may  be 
worse.  What  I  had  seen  of  it  had  been  satisfactory  enough 
in  some  respects,  and  I  determined  to  stay  a  little  longer,  if 
I  could.  At  the  same  time,  I  knew  that  there  must  be  a 
change,  that  things  could  not  go  on  as  they  were  for  long, 
or  that,  if  they  did,  I  must  make  up  my  mind  to  follow  my 
children,  whither  we  must  all  go  sooner  or  later.  I  had 
taken  all  the  remedies  that  were  presented  to  me ;  I  had 
seen  my  children  pass  away ;  I  had  observed  death  around 
me  striking  down  the  young  and  the  old,  and  I  myself  was 
far  on. my  way  to  the  same  fate  ;  what  wonder  should  there 
be,  then,  if  I  realized  the  momentous  fact  that  physicians 
cannot  cure  disease — in  other  words,  that  medicine  does  not 
destroy  microbes. 

Good  friends  were  generous  with  their  advice.  I  was 
told  to  try  first  one  thing  then  another,  but  I  had  become 
wearied  with  what  I  had  come  to  believe  was  so  much  hum- 
bug, and  I  determined  to  swallow  no  more  medicine.  I 
again  studied  advertisements.  There  I  saw  commended 
electric  belts,  porous  plasters,  liniments,  lotions,  and  salves, 


VVM.   RADAM   BEFORE  TREATMENT. 


GASTRITIS. 


PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES.  73 

and  all  sorts  of  external  applications  that  would  cure  every 
thing,  purify  the  blood,  strengthen  the  nerves,  stimulate  the 
functions  of  all  the  organs,  kill  the  microbes,  and  rejuvenate 
the  individual  in  mind  and  body.  Well,  this  was  something. 
Whatever  such  things  would  or  would  not  do,  there  was  no 
medicine  in  them — nothing  to  swallow,  no  poison, — so,  if 
they  did  no  good,  I  could  not  see  that  they  would  do  harm. 
The  end  of  my  thinking  was  that  I  sent  off  ten  dollars  to 
Chicago  for  an  electric  belt.  Some  of  the  advertising  firms 
fail  to  respond,  as  they  promise,  to  money  remittances,  but 
my  belt  came,  and  I  lost  no  time  in  fixing  it  on.  It  reminded 
me  of  former  days  when  I  was  a  soldier,  with  belt  and  sabre, 
in  the  German  army.  Then  I  jumped  ditches  eight  feet 
wide,  and  sang  and  laughed  when  others  fell  into  the  water, 
but  now  things  were  changed.  Then  I  had  health  and 
youth,  now  I  was  far  older  in  health  than  in  years,  but  I 
concluded  that,  being  but  forty-three,  if  the  belt  did  all  that 
was  promised  for  it,  there  should  be  no  reason  why  I  might 
not  live  forty  years  or  more  yet.  So  I  gave  the  belt  a  good 
chance.  I  wore  it  faithfully  for  three  months,  and  tried  to 
help  it  by  covering  myself  in  every  likely  spot  with  porous 
plasters.  In  that  condition  I  went  about  my  business,  clad 
in  a  kind  of  coat  armor  to  fight  microbes.  I  tried  to  per- 
suade myself  that  I  was  doing  exactly  the  right  thing,  and 
set  to  work  to  find  enjoyment  among  my  roses,  and  to  forget 
my  troubles. 

But  it  was  of  no  use.  My  limbs  did  not  consider  that 
much  enjoyment.  The  microbes  were  unhappy,  and  would 
not  be  appeased.  They  gave  me  no  rest.  They  tortured 
me  unceasingly,  and  finally  they  drove  me  back  in  despair 
and  desperation  to  my  bed.  I  tried  strong  vinegar ;  friends 
recommended  mustard  plasters,  so  mustard  plasters  were 
tried.  I  covered  every  painful  spot  with  them,  and  suffered 
tortures,  with  no  relief.  I  am  ashamed  of  myself  when  I 
think  that  I  ever  listened  to  such  advice,  and  descended  to 
such  folly.  So  now  all  had  failed.  Medicines  had  reduced 
me  to  the  lowest  condition  of  weakness  and  disease.  I  had 


74  MICROBES. 


swallowed  poisons  till  they  had  no  longer  any  effect  upon 
me.  Electric  belts,  lotions,  plasters,  blisters,  every  thing, 
internal  and  external,  had  proved  useless.  I  was  worse  than 
ever,  with  no  resource  untried,  and  no  longer  a  particle  of 
faith  in  any  thing  that  doctors,  proprietary-medicine  makers, 
or  advertisers  could  offer  me,  and  I  refused  further  advice. 

But  this  refusal  lasted  only  for  a  time.  A  drowning  man 
will  catch  at  a  straw.  A  friend  came  along  who  suggested 
a  massage  operator.  He  told  me  that  one  of  these  rubbing 
doctors  had  cured  him  of  rheumatism,  so  my  determination 
failed  me,  and  my  hopes  were  renewed.  I  thought  the  sug- 
gestion over  philosophically.  I  had  tried  medicines  internally 
and  externally  to  no  purpose,  but.  here  was  something  dif- 
ferent. It  was  not  medicine  of  any  kind,  there  were  no 
poisons  nor  plasters,  and  I  convinced  myself  that  I  should 
try  it.  Well,  I  went  to  the  man's  office,  and  he  lost  no  time 
in  getting  to  work.  He  rubbed  and  pounded  and  drove  his 
thumbs  into  my  flesh  till  I  roared  with  pain,  and  cried  to 
heaven  that  he  would  not  kill  me.  He  told  me  to  bear  it, 
that  he  would  rid  of  me  all  my  pains  if  only  I  would  endure 
the  inconvenience  for  a  time.  So  I  clinched  my  teeth  to- 
gether, and  told  him  to  go  on.  He  went  on,  and  he  con- 
tinued his  practice  on  me  for  about  five  minutes,  poking  and 
pounding  and  straining  my  joints,  until  I  could  bear  it  no 
longer.  I  jumped  out  of  bed,  gave  him  five  dollars,  and 
hastened  home,  content  to  die,  and  solemnly  swearing  to 
myself  that  I  would  never  again  submit  to  such  cruel  and 
barbarous  treatment. 

The  frame  of  mind  to  which  I  was  then  reduced  is  not 
easy  to  describe,  and,  except  by  those  who  have  been  simi- 
larly placed,  it  cannot  be  imagined.  I  was  depressed  and 
ill.  I  again  thought  over  the  fate  of  my  children,  and  how 
they  had  been  sacrificed  to  ignorance  and  incompetency.  I 
saw  before  me  no  better  or  different  prospect  for  myself.  I 
had  given  up  all  hope.  There  seemed  nothing  further  to 
be  done.  All  the  usual  resources  of  sick  persons  had  been 
tried,  and  they  had  failed.  I  was  steadily  getting  worse, 
growing  weaker,  and  suffering  more.  I  had  tried  every  thing 


fcfc   I 

L_. '  !-.i 


CONGESTION  OF 


•• 
MUCOUS  MEMBRANE  OF  STOMACH. 


.'  ;> 

.% 


• 

«    ^-* 


MICROBES  FROM  THE  STOMACH. 


PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES. 


that  medical  science  offered,  and  I  became  so  thoroughly 
discouraged  that,  in  my  despondency,  I  began  to  look  upon 
it  as  nothing  better  than  a  fraud  and  a  humbug.  I  saw 
healthy  children  fall  sick  and  die,  while  medicine  was 
powerless  to  relieve  them,  and,  with  my  own  condition  ever 
fixed  upon  my  mind,  I  began  to  think  over  past  experiences 
in  my  business. 

I  recalled  much  of  the  work  that  I  had  been  called  upon 
to  do  throughout  my  career,  and  in  my  management  of 
flowers.  I  recalled  the  various  drugs  that  I  had  been  in  the 
habit  of  using  to  destroy  worms  and  fungi  in  plants.  I 
thought  over  all  that  I  had  read  of  the  experiences  of  nurs- 
erymen in  dealing  with  blight  in  pear-trees  and  of  the 
remedies  that  had  been  suggested  ;  I  recalled  to  mind  the 
sums  of  money  I  had  thrown  away  in  Texas  only  for  the 
purchase  of  pest  poisons  to  kill  insects  in  cabbages  alone. 
I  had  experimented  in  and  tried  all  the  remedies  that  had 
been  recommended  to  kill  fungi  and  destroy  dry  rot,  mildew, 
and  other  diseases  in  grape-vines.  I  bethought  me  'again 
how  I  had  offered  a  reward  of  one  thousand  dollars  for 
something  that  would  destroy  cabbage  blight  without  injur- 
ing the  cabbage,  when  soon  General  Ruggels  and  Captain 
Warner  appeared  at  my  grounds  ready,  as  they  said,  to  earn 
the  prize.  Their  plan  was  not  new,  and  if  they  had  had  as 
much  knowledge  about  what  they  were  doing  as  the  veriest 
tyro  in  chemistry  would  have  had,  they  would  have  known 
how  absurd  their  proposition  was.  However,  I  gave  them 
a  chance  to  test  their  alleged  discovery.  A  cabbage  was 
selected  which  was  covered  with  blight,  and  an  old  kerosene 
can  was  placed  over  it.  One  spoonful  of  sulphur  was  then 
put  underneath  in  a  small  saucer  and  ignited,  the  fumes 
being  allowed  to  fill  the  can.  Five  minutes  later  we  ex- 
amined the  plant,  and,  sure  enough,  every  insect,  every  por- 
tion of  the  blight  was  effectually  killed,  but  the  cabbage,  too, 
was  as  dead  as  a  door-nail. 

When  that  little  experiment  came  back  to  my  mind,  it 
occurred  to  me  that  it  was  an  excellent  illustration  of  the 
effect  of  medicine,  which,  while  it  destroys  the  microbes, 


MICROBES. 


kills  the  patient  too,  the  patient  being  usually  the  first  to 
succumb.  It  led  me  again  to  think  over  my  own  garden 
experiences,  and  the  conviction  became  deeply  impressed 
on  my  mind  that,  if  I  could  discover  any  thing  that  would 
kill  blight,  fungi,  and  microbes  on  plants  without  injuring 
them,  I  should  also  be  in  possession  of  something  that  would 
cure  me.  I  felt  that  I  had  had  large  experience,  that  I  had 
been  a  careful  and  close  observer  of  Nature  and  her  opera- 
tions, and  was  positively  assured  of  the  causes,  to  some  extent, 
that  led  to  the  production  of  plant  diseases.  I  knew  that 
all  the  various  kinds  of  fungus,  or  micro-organism,  which 
produce  rot,  mildew,  etc.,  appear  more  frequently  at  changes 
of  the  weather,  and  that  whenever  we  had  rain  in  spring 
after  a  bright  sunshine,  disease  would  make  its  appearance 
on  the  grape-vines  within  twenty-four  hours. 

The  effect  thus  so  quickly  apparent  was  as  if  some  one 
had  sprinkled  the  leaves  with  some  kind  of  poison.  At  first, 
little  red  spots  became  visible.  These  gradually,  yet  rapidly, 
grew 'larger,  and  spread  until  they  covered  the  leaves  and 
extended  to  the  fruit,  and  in  about  three  weeks  it  was  pos- 
sible to  determine  how  the  crop  would  be  affected.  Having 
used  so  many  medicines  and  drugs  on  myself,  there  were 
almost  the  contents  of  a  drug-store  accumulated  in  my 
laboratory,  and  so,  with  the  help  of  my  garden  books  and  a 
small  microscope,  I  set  to  work  to  investigate  the  matter 
more  closely.  First  of  all,  I  examined  about  forty  varieties 
of  grapes  that  were  at  my  disposal.  Some  of  them  were 
more  infested  than  others.  Several  were  not  attacked  at 
all,  and  others  very  slightly,  so  that  they  soon  recovered 
and  lost  all  evidence  of  disease.  Among  those  least  diseased 
were  the  Delawares,  Concords,  and  a  few  others,  and  these 
I  could  always  depend  upon,  but  the  Black  Spanish,  Tokay, 
and  all  the  California  varieties  were  easy  victims  to  the 
fungus.  There  was  abundant  material  upon  which  to  ex- 
periment, and  I  began  with  all  the  remedies  that  had  been 
suggested  by  the  Agricultural  Department  at  Washington 
in  the  articles  published  from  that  office  on  the  diseases  of 


PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES.  77 

the  vine,  but  with  little  or  no  effect.  If  I  used  the  drugs 
sparingly  they  failed  to  destroy  the  fungus,  and  if  I  used 
them  more  liberally  they  killed  the  vine,  or,  at  the  best,  they 
destroyed  the  fruit  and  the  leaves.  I  found  prevention  to 
be  better  than  cure,  and  that  the  disease  was  kept  away 
either  by  putting  a  roof  over  the  vine  or  covering  the  grapes 
with  a  paper  bag,  thus  warding  off  rain  and  dew.  Noting 
the  temperature  and  condition  of  the  atmosphere,  and  the 
effects  of  sudden  changes  of  the  weather  on  my  vines,  I 
observed  that,  when  these  were  greatest,  there  was  also  more 
coughing  and  more  sickness  among  the  people.  Common- 
sense,  and  no  great  exercise  of  reason,  led  me  to  see  that 
the  same  causes  had  operated  in  both  cases,  and  that  the 
human  race  suffered  from  the  same  influences  as  those  which 
brought  disease  to  the  plants  and  to  the  vegetable  world. 
All  organic  life  is,  in  fact,  affected  in  the  same  way,  and  al- 
though it  has  frequently  been  observed  that  in  what  are 
called  unhealthy  seasons  the  crops  of  fruit  and  cereals  are 
likely  to  be  inferior,  yet  the  observation  has  never  before 
been  given  its  full  practical  import. 

From  the  grape-vines  I  turned  my  attention  to  straw- 
berries, and  there  I  found  similar  enemies.  Worms,  large 
and  small,  were  on  them,  destroying  alike  fruit,  leaves,  and 
roots,  besides  large  quantities  of  bacteria  and  fungi  that 
were  no  less  injurious.  A  group  of  geraniums  might  be  ap- 
parently in  perfect  health,  and  in  twenty-four  hours  the 
enemy  would  come  in  upon  them  like  yellow-fever  upon  the 
people.  I  could  go  through  a  garden  of  flowers  and  not 
only  demonstrate  all  this  readily,  but  prove,  without  much 
difficulty,  that  each  variety  has  a  host  of  enemies  that 
destroys  it. 

In  the  open  air  there  is  great  difficulty  in  contending 
against  these  enemies.  It  is  not  so  easy  to  bring  plants 
under  the  immediate  influence  of  the  remedies,  and  exposure 
to  the  atmosphere  makes  them,  of  course,  more  liable  to  any 
deleterious  effects ;  but  in  the  greenhouse  very  much  can  be 
done  if  the  plants  are  attended  to  in  time. 


78  MICROBES. 


Flowers  go  through  the  same  processes  and  functions  as 
man.  They  take  nourishment,  and  die  as  he  does.  They 
need  air,  food,  and  water;  they  suffer  from  disease,  go 
through  various  phases  of  health,  and  are  subject  to  similar 
disturbances  as  those  which  afflict  men  and  animals.  Res- 
piration is  as  essential  to  them  as  to  us.  Changes  are  con- 
stantly going  on  in  their  tissues,  and  fluids  circulate  through 
them  in  constant  directions,  and  even  with  considerable 
force.  In  some  of  the  lower  forms  of  vegetable  life  there  is 
a  still  stronger  resemblance  to  animal  forms.  The  so-called 
thread-plants,  which  comprise  many  fungi  and  lichens,  are 
often  nothing  more  than  a  series  of  cells,  sometimes  inter- 
woven, sometimes  in  lines ;  but  their  mode  of  receiving 
nourishment  is  instructive  and  very  interesting  in  this  con- 
sideration. All  the  higher  orders  of  plants  live  for  the  most 
part  on  inorganic  matter.  They  require  for  their  sustenance 
water,  ammonia  or  nitrogen,  and  carbonic  acid,  and  in  ab- 
sorbing the  latter  they  decompose  it  and  give  out  oxygen. 
But  the  fungi  take  nourishment  very  differently.  They 
require  organic  food.  They  cannot  form  their  tissues  out 
of  the  elements  that  are  necessary  or  sufficient  for  the 
higher  plants.  They  take  into  their  systems  carbon  com- 
pounds already  formed.  In  other  words,  they  live  upon  the 
plants  or  animals  to  which  they  attach  themselves,  and  they 
absorb  oxygen  from  the  atmosphere  and  give  out  carbonic 
acid  as  animals  do. 

The  older  botanists  held  that  one  of  the  distinctions 
between  plants  and  animals  was  the  power  to  form  starch, 
which  exists  in  the  former  and  not  in  the  latter,  but  fungi 
never  form  starch,  and  in  that  respect  again  they  more 
nearly  resemble  animal  life.  Neither  do  they  form  the 
peculiar  coloring  matter  which  we  find  in  the  leaves  of 
higher  organizations,  so  that  in  many  respects  they  justify 
us  in  regarding  them  as  something  very  different  from  ordi- 
nary vegetable  growths.  This  enables  us  to  appreciate  more 
fully  the  evil  that  they  are  capable  of  when  they  attach 
themselves  to  other  bodies. 


PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES.  79 

I  may  emphasize  this  still  further.  Recent  investigations 
have  shown  that  even  lichens  are  not  simple  or  individual 
growths,  but  that  each  one  consists  of  two  parts,  the  one 
being  a  low  form  of  alga,  and  the  other  a  parasitic  fungus. 
The  algae  constitute  that  form  of  vegetable  life  which  is 
found  in  the  rocks  of  the  earliest  formations,  and  they  were 
probably  for  many  centuries  of  ages  the  chief,  if  not  the 
only,  organic  bodies  on  the  earth,  except  similar  forms  that 
would  be  contained  in  the  waters.  They  vary  in  size  from 
a  minute  species  far  smaller  than  a  blood-corpuscle  to  others 
that  are  several  hundred  feet  in  length,  and  it  is  generally 
accepted  that  they  form  a  very  large  proportion  of  the 
coal-beds. 

Those  persons  who,  crossing  the  North  Atlantic  in  its 
southern  part,  have  had  the  good-fortune  to  traverse  the 
Sargosso  Sea,  know  what  these  forms  of  vegetable  life  may 
become  when  fully  developed  and  massed  in  large  fields. 
Residents  on  the  sea-shore  are  familiar  with  them  in  the 
sea-weed  that  is  ever  being  washed  up  from  the  ocean,  and 
people  whose  homes  are  in  the  interior  know  of  them  as  the 
green  slime  that  forms  on  stagnant  pools  or  ditches,  or  the 
slimy  matter  that  may  be  found  on  wood  in  damp  places,  or 
the  fine  thread-like  bodies  that  occur  in  ponds  and  rivers  of 
fresh  water  everywhere.  All  varieties  of  algae  originated 
from  a  single  cell,  and,  however  large,  they  are  of  the 
simplest  construction.  Sometimes  they  are  extremely  beau- 
tiful, and  of  colors  varying  from  purple  and  bright-scarlet  to 
sombre  brown. 

Everybody  who  has  ever  given  particular  attention  to  the 
various  lichens  to  be  found  in  the  woods  is  acquainted  with 
the  beauties  which  they  present,  but  in  that  respect  the  salt- 
water algae  far  surpass  them.  The  latter  are,  however,  of  a 
higher  class,  the  one  constituent  of  the  lichen  being  a  low 
form  of  the  primitive  organization.  The  other  constituent 
of  the  lichen  is,  as  I  have  said,  a  fungus.  It  is  a  parasite* 
and  obtains  its  nourishment,  not  from  inorganic  matter,  but 
from  the  alga.  Look  at  any  well-developed  lichen,  such  as 


80  MICROBES. 


may  be  found  on  old  wood  or  on  unhealthy  trees  anywhere 
in  the  country.  There  will  generally  be  seen  two  distinct 
portions,  one  green,  brown,  yellow,  black,  or  at  any  rate 
colored  ;  the  other,  white  or  more  or  less  colorless.  The 
former  belongs  to  the  alga,  the  latter  to  the  fungus,  yet  the 
two  are  intimately  connected  and  interwoven,  and  were 
once  supposed  to  be  but  a  single  organization.  The  value 
of  these  bodies  in  nature  is  very  great.  They  form  on  the 
driest  and  most  desolate  spots.  The  lava  in  volcanic  regions 
becomes  covered  with  them.  The  alga  derives  its  nourish- 
ment from  moisture  and  the  air,  the  fungus  appropriates 
nourishment  from  the  body  to  which  it  is  attached.  The 
growth  of  the  lichen  tends"  to  disintegrate  the  rock,  and  by 
death  and  decay  to  constitute  the  first  beginning  of  a  soil 
in  which  in  future  times  plants  of  a  higher  organization  may 
grow  and  flourish. 

Thus  the  relations  between  animals  and  plants  are  very 
intimate,  and  if  we  would  know  how  to  treat  disease  in  the 
former,  we  must  study  it  in  the  latter.  If  we  would  cure 
members  of  the  human  family,  let  us  see  how  disease  affects 
the  vegetable  world,  and  ascertain  if  we  can  what  remedial 
agents  are  necessary  and  safe  there.  If  in  our  experiments 
we  kill  a  few  plants,  the  loss  is  not  very  great,  but  if  in  the 
same  way  human  life  be  sacrificed,  the  process  becomes  a 
serious  one.  Human  lives  and  human  health  are  sacrificed 
in  this  way  by  doctors  to  build  up  medical  science.  When 
a  new  drug  is  introduced,  its  value,  or  rather  its  properties, 
are  unknown.  Experiments  on  animals  are  first  undertaken, 
but  these  are  only  tentative,  they  are  necessarily  not  conclu- 
sive, and  then  experiments  are  begun  upon  the  human  body. 
These  may  be  conducted  in  hospitals  where  the  patients  are 
poor  and  it  is  not  deemed  of  much  importance  whether  they 
live  or  die,  but  physicians  often  practise  them  upon  private 
patients.  How  many  people  have  fallen  victims  to  chloro- 
form, morphine,  antipyrine,  cocaine,  aconitine,  and  other 
powerful  and  dangerous  agents  before  their  properties  were 
fully  known  !  Even  when  they  are  supposed  to  be  known, 


BACILLUS  ANTHRACIS  IN  LUNG.     (PARIS.) 


BACILLUS  ANTHRACIS,  CULT'D.     (BERLIN.) 


PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES.  8 1 

the  action  of  them  and  other  drugs  is  so  excessive  that  lives 
are  frequently  sacrificed  inadvertently.  But  the  law  protects 
the  doctors  in  these  proceedings,  and  when  death  occurs 
it  is  regarded  only  as  a  tribute  to  science.  Just  as  we  have 
instances  where  autopsies  are  held  and  people  are  cut  to 
pieces  before  it  is  certain  that  they  are  dead,  as  in  the  case 
of  Mr.  Bishop,  and  all  to  serve  the  cause  of  medical  science. 

In  experimenting  on  plants  there  is  no  such  risk,  and  when 
we  shall  have  found  something  which  will  destroy  microbes 
without  injury  to  the  plant  we  may  safely  test  it  on  the 
human  body.  I  have  mentioned  the  proposal  that  was 
made  to  win  the  one  thousand  dollars  that  I  offered  as  a  re- 
ward for  something  that  would  kill  the  cabbage  bugs  ;  and  it 
ruined  the  cabbage.  If  that  same  experiment  had  been  tried 
with  a  child,  it  would  most  certainly  have  killed  the  child. 
The  product  obtained  by  burning  sulphur  in  air  is  sulphurous 
acid.  This  has  bleaching  properties  and  disinfecting  power, 
and  no  animal  life  can  exist  in  it.  Its  use  as  a  disinfectant 
depends  on  that  property.  It  is  in  truth  a  deadly  poison 
when  taken  in  full  strength  into  the  lungs.  To  use  it  there- 
fore on  mankind  in  that  way  would  be  simply  criminal, 
whereas  an  experiment  with  a  plant  is  justifiable  and  useful. 
It  may  be  inferred  with  tolerable  certainty  that  if  any  agent 
that  is  offered  to  us  has  no  deleterious  effects  on  vegetable 
life,  it  will  not  be  very  hazardous  to  test  it  on  the  human 
body. 

All  my  early  life  was  passed  amid  flowers.  I  was  engaged 
in  their  cultivation  ;  I  learned  their  habits  and  their  needs; 
I  watched  their  lives  ;  I  studied  them  in  health  and  noted  care- 
ful observations  about  their  diseases ;  I  experimented,  and 
it  will  be  well  if  I  give  some  of  my  experiences  and  how 
I  went  to  work  to  try  and  cure  fungi. 

If  plants  are  kept  as  nearly  as  possible  in  their  native  con- 
dition, with  good  soil  from  which  to  obtain  their  nourish- 
ment and  in  a  pure  atmosphere  and  an  equable  and 
proper  temperature ;  if,  too,  they  are  raised  from  healthy 

stock,  they  are  not  subject  to  disease.   Fungi  cannot  readily 
6 


82  MICROBES. 


get  a  foothold  on  them.  So  a  child,  the  offspring  of  healthy 
parents  and  a  sturdy  ancestry,  properly  fed,  kept  in  whole- 
some surroundings,  sheltered  from  extremes  of  heat  and 
cold  in  a  climate  that  is  neither  too  hot  nor  too  dry,  and 
protected  from  contact  with  disease  of  others,  is  not  very 
likely  to  grow  up  unhealthy  or  to  be  subject  to  any 
serious  illness.  But  if  plants  are  chilled  or  kept  too  warm  ; 
if  the  soil  be  allowed  to  parch  or  to  become  too  wet ;  if  no 
sunlight  be  permitted  to  have  access  to  them,  or  if  they  be 
propagated  from  sickly  stock,  they  will  soon  become  the 
resting-place  of  microbes,  which  will  accumulate  upon  them 
in  masses  and  very  soon  render  the  sickly  flower  a  seat  of  the 
most  fatal  disease.  Take  a  plant  so  circumstanced  and  let 
a  doctor  try  the  effect  of  his  drugs  and  chemicals,  if  he  suc- 
ceed in  killing  the  fungi  he  will  also  assuredly  destroy  the 
life  of  the  plant;  but  the  chances  are  that  he  cannot  kill  the 
micro-organisms,  and  if  he  cannot  destroy  them  in  a  flower, 
be  sure  that  he  cannot  do  any  better  when  they  are  in  the 
human  system.  He  cannot  cure  disease  then,  which  is  the 
same  thing. 

I  have  applied  drugs,  both  directly  and  indirectly,  to  the 
fungus,  and  in  my  selection  I  was  at  first  guided  by  a 
knowledge  of  what  physicians  use  for  destroying  microbes 
in  their  patients.  Dusting  them  over  the  affected  parts  of 
the  plants  I  found  the  following  to  be  worthless :  Sulphur, 
borax,  boracic  acid,  salicylic  acid,  camphor,  tannic  acid, 
acetic  acid,  tartaric  acid,  alum,  bluestone,  Paris  green,  white 
hellebore,  calomel,  saltpetre,  Epsom  salts,  lime,  and  various 
salts  of  potassium  and  sodium.  Many  of  these,  if  not  all,  are 
employed  by  doctors  in  the  treatment  of  diseases  which  the 
doctors  themselves  attribute  to  the  •  presence  of  micro- 
organisms, yet  they  will  not  kill  those  same  bodies  on  a 
plant ;  how,  then,  can  they  destroy  them  in  the  body  ? 

But  fungi  on  plants  may  be  killed.  They  yield  to  the 
direct  application  of  nitric,  carbolic,  and  sulphuric  acids, 
ammonia,  copperas  or  sulphate  of  iron,  muriatic  and  chromic 
acids,  phosphorous  and  sulphurous  acids,  and  some  of  their 


PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES.  83 


compounds.  Oil  of  turpentine  and  mustard,  benzoine, 
kerosine,  and  bisulphide  of  carbon  also  destroy  them, — and 
the  plants  also. 

Now  every  one  of  these  things  is  used  by  physicians,  and 
it  cannot  be  doubted  that  they  are  highly  dangerous.  In 
fact  they  kill  more  than  they  cure  ;  possibly  they  do  not  cure 
any,  although  they  have  the  credit  for  it,  and  physicians  use 
them  ignorantly. 

I  once  obtained  some  eminently  practical  results,  which 
led  me  to  further  experiments,  whereby  fungi  were  checked 
in  their  reproduction  by  putting  some  of  those  poisonous 
drugs  into  bottles  and  so  arranging  them  that  only  gaseous 
matter  could  intermingle  with  the  air.  But  I  felt  the  poi- 
sonous effects  in  my  lungs,  and  I  found  that  under  this 
influence  some  of  the  tender  leaves  of  the  plants  turned 
black,  and  I  was  very  glad  to  give  up  those  experiments. 
Even  a  very  dense  tobacco  smoke  will  sometimes  be 
injurious  to  tender  flowers.  When  the  air  was  warm  and 
moist  I  found  that  fungoid  growths  appeared  everywhere, 
and  multiplied  with  astonishing  rapidity.  Under  the  same 
conditions  milk  turns  sour  very  rapidly,  meat  shows  evi- 
dence of  fermentation,  strawberries  and  other  fruits  become 
rapidly  covered  with  micro-organisms,  which  spoil  them 
quickly,  and  the  microbes  in  my  own  body  at  the  same  time 
became  lively  so  that  I  would  have  to  lie  down  and  protect 
myself  from  the  changes.  Then  at  other  times,  especially 
after  thunder-storms,  no 'fungi  were  formed,  and  I  too  felt 
better,  breathing  more  easily  and  being  more  free  from  pain. 
At  the  same  time,  too,  meat  and  milk  would  keep  longer, 
and  many  forms  of  fungus  disappeared,  while  my  plants 
always  looked  better,  and  were  more  full  of  life. 

This  observation  opened  my  eyes.  My  reason  told  me 
that  I  must  look  for  that  something  which  purified  the  air 
and  removed  the  germs  of  fungi  and  disease,  acting  so  pow- 
erfully and  yet  so  harmlessly  to  the  higher  organs  of  life, 
for  its  action  was  far  more  powerful  than  that  of  all  the 
poisonous  drugs  I  had  before  used.  I  felt  certain  that  here- 


84  MICROBES. 


in  lay  the  key  to  my  remedy.  But  to  identify  it  absolutely, 
to  make  it  artificially,  and  then  to  apply  it  correctly,  were 
problems  that  occupied  my  attention  for  more  than  a  year 
after.  My  former  experiments  had  shown  me  that  powerful 
drugs  had  little  or  no  effect  if  applied  externally  to  plants 
or  trees,  or  if  dusted  on  fruits.  I  found  also  that  sprinkling 
and  washing  pear-trees  which  had  blight  were  very  little 
good,  and  that  even  pruning  and  cutting  off  diseased  parts 
gave  at  best  but  temporary  relief,  because  no  sooner  was  it 
done  than  other  parts  became  diseased,  and  by  pruning  away 
all  the  dead  matter  there  was  soon  nothing  but  the  stump 
left,  and  then  that  too  died. 

This  very  much  resembles  what  happens  in  the  exercise 
of  "  scientific  surgery,"  where  limbs  or  diseased  portions  are 
cut  away  and  the  disease  breaks  out  again,  so  that  the 
patient  dies  from  constant  operations  unless  the  microbes 
are  left  undisturbed  to  fulfil  their  mission.  Of  course  we 
all  know  that  surgical  operations  are  often  successful,  but 
those  are  mostly  cases  of  severe  injury  where  it  is  necessary 
to  remove  the  injured  portion.  It  is  very  different  when  the 
operation  is  undertaken  to  remove  parts  that  are  diseased 
from  the  presence  of  micro-organisms,  or  fungi,  or  microbes, 
as,  for  example,  cancer.  To  cure  a  tree  of  tendency  to ' 
blight  it  is  necessary  to  go  to  the  roots.  Most  persons  know 
that  flowers  which  grow  luxuriantly  are  less  subject  to  blight 
than  others  whose  growth  is  slower  and  whose  appearance  is 
sickly.  We  must  then  furnish  the  tree  with  better  food  and 
drink,  that  will  enter  into  the  sap,  pass  through  the  tissues  and 
produce  a  condition  where  bacteria  will  not  live.  As  soon 
as  I  did  this  to  my  trees  their  green  color  returned,  they 
threw  out  fresh  shoots,  put  on  a  more  vigorous  growth,  and 
presented  no  further  necessity  for  cutting  off  the  limbs. 

The  organs  of  the  body  are  similar  in  functions  to  por- 
tions of  the  tree.  In  plants  every  cell  is  a  stomach.  Nour- 
ishment is  taken  up  by  the  roots.  It  passes  upwards  through 
certain  portions  of  the  stem  to  the  leaves.  There  it  is 
assimilated,  and  thence  it  passes  downwards,  forming  depos- 


FROM  A  TUMOR.     (CANCER?) 


MICROBES  IN  TUMOR. 


PERSONAL   EXPERIENCES.  85 


its  of  new  cells  over  the  old  wood  underneath  the  bark. 
While  therefore  the  plant  breathes  through  its  leaves,  yet 
if  we  would  reach  them  internally  we  must  go  first  to  the 
roots.  We  cannot  improve  and  enrich  the  sap  in  any  other 
way.  So  in  man  we  supply  food  and  nourishment  through 
the  stomach,  and  fresh  air  through  the  lungs,  if  we  would 
send  a  color  to  the  cheeks  and  promote  the  health  of  the 
person.  It  is  the  stomach  that  we  purify  and  strengthen 
first  of  all,  and  the  nerves,  blood-vessels,  muscles,  and  all 
other  tissues  derive  the  benefit. 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE   MICROBE   KILLER — MY   FIRST 
PATIENTS. 

FURTHER  reference  to  the  subject-matter  of  the  preced- 
ing pages  must  be  made  when  I  come  to  an  explanation  of 
the  principle  by  which  I  would  cure  disease  without  drugs. 
All  medicines  that  are  employed  to-day,  whether  inorganic 
or  organic,  should  be  antiseptics — that  is,  agents  capable  of 
preventing  fermentation.  Now  there  are  many  such  in  use 
by  the  medical  profession,  and  in  order  that  there  shall  be 
no  misunderstanding  I  will  advert  to  one  or  two  of  the  most 
characteristic.  First  of  all  is  bichloride  of  mercury,  an 
agent  so  powerful  that  it  can  only  be  administered  inter- 
nally in  minute  doses,  and  which  even  then,  and  with  the 
closest  watching,  produces  poisonous  effects. 

It  is,  as  its  name  indicates,  a  corrosive  poison,  destroy- 
ing the  lining  membrane  of  the  stomach,  producing  a  sense 
of  heat  with  much  pain  in  the  throat,  and  a  strong  metallic 
taste  in  the  mouth,  accompanied  by  severe  vomiting  and  a 
feeling  of  constriction  wherever  it  has  acted  on  the  mucous 
membrane.  If  death  be  not  induced,  in  a  few  hours  saliva- 
tion follows,  and  sometimes  the  functions  of  the  kidneys  are 
stopped. 

Salicylic  acid  is  also  an  antiseptic,  but  serious  conse- 
quences have  sometimes  followed  its  use.  The  poisonous 
qualities  of  carbolic  acid  are  well  known.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  powerful  corrosive  poisons  known,  and  yet  druggists 
distribute  it  freely  and  will  sell  it  to  anybody  who  asks  for 

86 


DEVELOPMENT  OF   THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  8/ 

it.  A  case  is  recorded  by  Dr.  Billroth,  of  Vienna,  where  a 
patient  lost  four  fingers  by  gangrene  produced  through  the 
application  of  carbolic  acid  to  a  trifling  wound.  Its  effects 
are  very  rapid.  A  marine  hospital  steward  swallowed  a 
small  quantity  by  mistake,  and  was  dead  within  three  min- 
utes, and  a  case  is  mentioned  in  Philadelphia  where  a  man 
entered  a  drug  store,  purchased  a  very  small  quantity  of  the 
strong  acid,  drank  it,  and  was  dead  before  he  could  leave  the 
store.  Moreover,  carbolic  acid  is  not  as  powerful  a  germi- 
cide as  some  other  things  in  use  by  the  profession. 

Permanganate  of  potash  is  so  active  that  one  grain  in 
twenty-four  hours  is  a  full  dose.  lodoform,  nitrate  of  silver 
(common  caustic),  are  also  in  use,  and  arsenic  is  a  favorite 
antiseptic.  Two  grains  of  arsenious  acid  have  proved  fatal, 
and  a  fourth  of  a  grain  may  produce  poisonous  symptoms. 
Arsenic  is  the  basis  of  many  quack  preparations  and  forms 
the  active  agent  in  complexion  wafers,  cancer  plasters  and 
ointments,  and  of  many  compounds  that  are  sold  in  unlim- 
ted  quantities  in  the  stores  and  by  advertising  adventurers. 
It  is  an  accumulative  poison.  Its  effects  may  not  be  injuri- 
ously apparent  until  it  has  been  used  for  some  time,  and  they 
then  appear  in  full  severity,  producing  symptoms  not  unlike 
Asiatic  cholera,  only  with  more  pain.  Thirst  is  intense,  con- 
sciousness usually  remains  to  the  last,  but  not  always,  and  con- 
vulsions, tetanus,  and  severe  vomiting  often  precede  a  state 
of  collapse  and  death. 

Besides  the  injurious  effects  produced  upon  the  tissues  and 
the  system  generally,  even  where  no  seriously  poisonous  re- 
sults follow,  many  of  these  poisons  are  injurious  to  the  teeth 
and  to  the  appearance  of  the  skin  ;  another  fact  which  should 
militate  against  their  use.  All  are  antiseptics  of  more  or  less 
power,  but  what  is  wanted  is  an  antiseptic  that  can  do  no 
injury  to  the  patient,  but  which  shall  at  the  same  time  be 
effectual  and  of  such  a  nature  that  it  may  be  taken  in  large 
quantities,  so  as  to  thoroughly  saturate  the  tissues.  It  must 
be  capable  of  absorption,  so  that  it  will  enter  the  blood.  It 
must  be  adapted  to  check,  for  instance,  such  damage  on  the 


88  -  MICROBES. 


blood  corpuscles  as  I  previously  explained  to  have  been 
observed  in  malaria,  where  the  parasitic  microbe  acts  di- 
rectly upon  the  vital  fluid  and  destroys  the  corpuscles  by 
attaching  itself  to  them  and  absorbing  them  as  it  were  into 
itself.  It  must  be  fitted  to  take  part  in  the  circulation  with- 
out poisonous  effects,  and  yet  to  be  so  destructive  of  microbe 
life  that  it  will  at  once  destroy  it,  and  in  that  way  free  the 
system  of  all  germs  of  disease. 

My  experience,  coupled  with  all  the  inquiries  I  have  been 
able  to  make,  convinces  me  that  physicians  have  never  yet 
discovered  any  drug  that  is  as  harmless  as  water  and  yet  as 
powerful  in  the  right  way  as  any  of  those  agents  I  have  men- 
tioned from  among  the  list 'of  poisons.  They  can  have  no 
such  medicine,  for  if  they  had  they  could  cure  disease,  and 
that  they  certainly  cannot  do,  for  persons  die  long  before 
they  get  old,  and  they  should  not  do  that  if  the  diseases  to 
which  they  are  subject  are  curable.  I  have  tested  most  of 
the  drugs  in  general  use  with  a  view  to  ascertain  whether 
they  have  any  real  power  over  the  existence  of  micro-organ- 
isms independently  of  other  properties,  because  a  drug  may 
be  a  very  powerful  poison  and  still  not  be  an  antiseptic  ;  and 
I  have  found  that  not  one  half  the  agents  mentioned  in 
medical  works,  or  of  the  formulas  recommended  from  time 
to  time  in  medical  periodicals,  have  any  antiseptic  properties 
at  all.  In  a  large  number  of  instances  the  whiskey  or  alco- 
hol used  in  the  manufacture  of  tinctures  and  other  prepara- 
tions plays  the  most  important  part,  and  it  is  used,  in  fact, 
itself  as  an  antiseptic  to  preserve  the  drug  from  fermenta- 
tion— in  other  words,  to  destroy  or  keep  away  fungi  and 
microbes.  This  is  of  the  utmost  importance,  since  a  drug 
that  is  in  the  process  of  fermentation  is  no  medicine.  It  has 
no  curative  properties.  The  more  of  it  that  passes  into  the 
stomach  the  more  fermentation  goes  on  in  the  system,  and 
disease  is  rather  increased  than  diminished.  But  if  you  can 
find  a  preparation  that  does  not  ferment  even  if  your  sick- 
ness increases,  and  which  you  can  take  into  the  stomach 
in  large  quantities  and  continuously  for  weeks  and  months, 


MICROBES  IN  SOUR  MILK. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF   THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  89 

so  that  the  blood  and  the  whole  system  become  saturated 
with  it,  then  you  have  a  good  medicine  and  one  in  which  you 
may  place  full  confidence.  But,  as  I  said  before,  you  may  go 
over  the  whole  Pharmacopoeia,  and  examine  the  catalogues  of 
drugs  that  are  in  use  or  for  sale,  and  you  will  not  find  one 
that  fills  these  requirements. 

My  inquiries  into  Nature's  processes  and  into  the  remedies 
in  use  for  treatment  of  disease  in  both  plants  and  animals 
have  not  been  superficial.  I  have  gone  into  them  deeply. 
My  studies  have  not  been  restricted  and  I  have  exercised 
my  thoughts  carefully,  so  that  I  feel  that  I  can  enter  into 
Nature's  mysteries  understandingly  and  to  some  practical 
purpose. 

Knowing  that  fermentation  goes  on  in  the  stomach,  I  felt 
the  value  of  discovering  something  that  would  stop  that 
process.  I  placed  some  of  the  contents  of  my  own  stomach 
into  a  bottle,  and  I  found  that  the  process  of  fermentation 
continued,  and  that  microbes  were  multiplied  and  propagated, 
and  flourished  exceedingly.  This  showed  to  me  as  plainly  as 
is  the  sun  at  noonday  that  the  same  process  goes  on  in  the 
stomach.  I,  from  time  to  time,  added  different  medicines  to 
the  same,  and  still  the  fermentation  was  not  checked.  The 
microbes  grew  in  spite  of  the  medicine,  telling  me  that  this 
was  useless  as  a  curative  agent.  Under  such  circumstances 
it  became  no  longer  any  source  of  wonder  to  me  that  I  did 
not  get  well,  or  that  instead  of  improving  I  steadily  became 
worse.  When  people  are  sick,  it  is  not  money  that  they  care 
for.  The  cost  of  drugs  and  the  doctor's  fees  are  a  second- 
ary consideration,  but  when  disease  is  not  stopped  they  be- 
come discouraged.  Their  pain  and  suffering  continue,  and 
money  is  of  little  consequence  to  one  who  feels  that  if  he 
cannot  get  help  death  is  before  him.  I  write  this  book 
for  the  benefit  of  the  public  and  their  welfare,  feeling  that 
the  world  is  my  country,  mankind  my  brethren,  and  to 
do  good  is  my  religion. 

In  this  spirit  I  have  advanced  thus  far,  and  in  the  same  I 
shall  proceed  to  tell  what  I  know.  Possibly  some  persons 


90  MICROBES. 


may  be  offended  ;  perhaps  I  may  be  the  means  of  injuring 
the  business  of  some.  If  so  I  cannot  help  it ;  let  them  fol- 
low some  other  occupation,  for  there  is  much  to  do  in  the 
world,  and  bread  for  all  who  will  do  it.  My  purpose  is  to 
give  the  truth  of  my  own  experience  and  knowledge  regard- 
less of  consequences  to  all  who  are  not  pursuing  an  equally 
open  and  straightforward  course. 

I  have  often  felt  pain  in  the  stomach,  either  from  over- 
eating or  from  drinking  too  much  water,  and  then  I  almost 
always  get  relief  with  whiskey.  This  shows  that  good 
whiskey  or  alc*ohol  will  stand  the  test ;  but  if  whiskey  or 
alcohol  be  mixed  with  water,  fermentation  is  not  stopped. 
Drugs  are  now  generally*  preserved  in  alcohol  or  whiskey, 
these  in  a  pure  state  being  the  most  harmless  of  antiseptics. 
But  give  a  patient  a  pint  of  alcohol  in  twelve  hours  and  you 
not  only  intoxicate  him,  you  kill  him.  It  is  not  desirable  to 
give  it  as  an  antiseptic,  and  I  regret  to  have  to  place  it  in 
the  list  with  them,  because  it  creates  a  taste  for  spirits, 
which  is  not  desirable,  and  people  are  too  much  addicted  to 
them  already.  But  common-sense  will  tell  most  people  that 
even  alcohol  is  less  harmful  than  morphia,  chloroform,  or 
the  ordinary  poisons  and  antiseptics  known  to  physicians. 
If  they  doubt  this  let  them  go  into  some  of  the  Prohibition 
States,  where  morphia  and  opium  are  taking  the  place  of 
whiskey,  which  the  law  forbids,  and  a  worse  state  of  things  is 
fast  growing  up  than  that  which  existed  under  the  old  law. 
Morphia  and  chloroform  are  excellent  microbe  killers.  If  we 
could  use  them  freely  as  water  no  other  medicine  would  be 
needed. 

Finding,  then,  that  alcohol  was  a  powerful  antiseptic, 
and  knowing  that  it  is  derived  from  the  vegetable  kingdom, 
from  fruit,  grain,  rice,  potatoes,  and  any  thing  that  contains 
starch  or  sugar,  I  made  raids  upon  my  garden  and 
the  prairies.  I  gathered  up  every  kind  of  plant  that  had 
any  aromatic  properties,  and  extracted  the  oil.  I  took  a 
similar  extract  by  grinding  up  onions,  sage,  thyme,  toma- 
toes, and  various  other  fruits  and  vegetables  as  well  as 


DEVELOPMENT  OF   THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  9! 

leaves.  In  fact,  I  refused  nothing  that  offered  me  any  kind 
of  juice,  oil,  or  extract  which  would  not  ferment  when 
mixed  with  a  sufficient  quantity  of  water  to  be  rendered 
harmless  in  the  stomach  when  taken  in  large  doses.  But  I 
was  not  successful.  I  did  not  find  any  thing  that  would 
answer  my  purpose.  The  more  I  worked,  the  more  I  ex- 
perimented, the  more  convinced  I  became  that  there  was  no 
medicine  to  be  found  in  that  way  which  would  kill  the 
microbe  and  stop  fermentation  without  killing  the  patient ; 
and  that  is  what  the  doctors  told  me  when  I  first  introduced 
the  microbe  killer  to  public  notice. 

However,  I  was  now  thoroughly  disheartened.  All  my 
efforts  had  failed  ;  all  my  experiments  had  proved  fruitless, 
except  to  give  me  negative  results  and  to  tell  me  I  had 
undertaken  something  that  could  not  be  accomplished.  I 
lay  down  to  die.  I  felt  that  there  was  no  cure  for  me,  no 
hope  that  I  could  get  better.  I  had  tried  every  thing  that 
friends  or  physicians  or  my  own  reason  could  suggest,  and 
all  to  no  purpose.  My  weight  had  fallen  from  one  hundred 
and  ninety  pounds  to  one  hundred  and  forty-four.  My 
energies  were  exhausted  and  my  spirits  were  depressed. 
But  the  subject  still  occupied  my  mind,  and  my  rest  seemed 
to  stimulate  my  brain.  I  thought  over  the  matter  inces- 
santly, until  at  last  something  happened  which  had  not  pre- 
viously occurred  to  me.  Nature  had  so  often  told  me  how 
she  purifies  the  air,  what  the  effects  of  a  thunder-storm  are, 
that  it  was  nothing  for  me  to  go  to  her  once  more  for  instruction 
and  advice.  I  asked  myself  the  question  :  What  is  air?  Is 
it  nothing  more  than  oxygen,  nitrogen,  carbonic  acid,  am- 
monia, and  water,  with  electricity  pervading  all  ?  And  if 
there  be  any  thing  more,  what  is  it  ?  and  how  can  we  make 
it  ?  I  turned  these  questions  over  in  my  mind  constantly. 
I  knew  that  there  was  pure  air  up  in  the  mountains.  I  heard 
of  oxygen  treatment,  hydropathy,  water  cure,  electricity,  and 
I  read  of  doctors,  or  professed  doctors,  who  practised  them, 
so  I  concluded  that  there  must  be  something  in  the  sugges- 
tion. On  this  I  set  to  work  once  more.  I  examined  each 


92  MICROBES. 


theory  separately,  and  prepared  several  forms  of  apparatus 
before  I  arrived  at  that  which  we  now  use.  My  success  did 
not  come  all  at  once.  I  abandoned  my  plans  three  times, 
as  each  combination  failed,  but  I  felt  that  it  was  a  case  of 
life  or  death,  that  I  must  either  succeed  or  die,  so  I  put  all 
my  energies  into  it,  and  persevered,  with  the  result  that  at 
last  I  had  in  my  possession  the  means  of  killing  microbes 
that  had  all  the  requirements  I  had  specified.  I  found  a 
combination  which  was  perfectly  harmless  to  the  person 
taking  it,  and  which  kills  microbes  with  certainty ;  also  one 
which  is  quite  different  from  any  thing  hitherto  numbered 
among  curative  agents.  I  tested  it  fully,  and  assured  my- 
self of  its  properties  and  powers. 

I  tried  it  upon  myself,  and  the  effects  became  apparent 
almost  immediately.  I  increased  the  dose  gradually  until  I 
found  how  much  best  suited  me ;  then  I  persevered,  and  the 
effects  showed  themselves  promptly.  Peculiar  sensations 
were  felt  all  over  me,  but  especially  in  the  most  afflicted 
regions,  as  though  the  microbes  were  shifting  about  my 
body,  but  there  were  no  bad  effects  whatever.  My  stomach 
became  clean.  Fermentation  ceased.  My  appetite  im- 
proved, and  digestion  was  good.  I  increased  the  dose  from 
three  to  six  wineglassfuls  a  day,  and  grew  weaker.  My 
energies  failed  me,  and  I  became  depressed.  Consequently 
I  stopped  taking  the  microbe  killer  for  a  few  days  till  my 
stomach  recovered  itself,  and  then  I  renewed  the  treatment, 
but  regulated  the  doses  by  my  feelings.  For  a  long  time  I 
felt  very  ill,  some  days  being  worse  than  others,  but  this  was 
readily  accounted  for  by  the  low  and  weak  condition  to 
which  I  had  been  reduced,  and  my  state  of  nervous  depres- 
sion was  extreme.  The  microbes  that  were  in  my  body 
probably  did  not  like  the  treatment,  and  they  seemed  to  be 
constantly  moving  about,  but  I  knew  that  I  had  something 
which  could  not  hurt  me,  and  I  persevered  steadily.  I  knew 
from  my  garden  experience  how  difficult  it  is  to  get  rid  of 
weeds  and  to  cure  blight  and  fungi  from  the  plants,  especially 
when  they  have  been  allowed  to  get  ahead  and  to  increase 
and  flourish  undisturbed. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF   THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  93 

My  blood  must  have  been  teeming  with  microbes  which 
had  been  propagating  and  increasing  for  years,  and  it  would 
have  been  folly  for  me  to  expect  to  get  rid  of  them  in  less 
than  twelve  months.  My  disease  had  become  chronic.  It 
had  remained  so  long  that  it  had  almost  grown  to  be  a  part 
of  my  system,  a  part  of  my  constitution,  and  it  is  always 
difficult  to  eradicate  any  disease  in  that  condition.  But  I 
had  hope,  and  my  hope  had  grown  into  confidence.  All  my 
experiments  came  back  to  me  now  and  assured  me  that  I 
was  in  the  way  to  get  well,  if  such  a  way  existed.  So  I  went 
on,  and  so  favorable  was  my  progress  that  at  the  end  of 
three  months  I  felt  almost  a  new  man.  I  was  considerably 
better.  I  had  no  longer  any  attacks  of  rheumatism,  and  the 
fever  had  abated  so  much  that  I  felt  only  the  slightest  symp- 
toms of  its  approach.  Sometimes  I  laughed  to  myself  at 
the  extraordinary  cure,  and  at  the  thought  that  a  disease 
that  had  defied  all  physicians,  all  drugs  and  remedies  that 
could  be  suggested,  all  the  advice  of  friends  and  the  rub- 
bings of  massage-doctors,  should  be  got  rid  of  by  drinking 
water.  My  appetite  became  so  ravenous,  and  my  digestive 
powers  so  strong,  that  I  could  eat  several  pounds  of  meat 
daily,  and  it  increased  my  strength  rapidly.  My  nervous 
prostration  ceased,  my  energies  returned,  no  pains  annoyed 
me,  I  slept  well,  my  mind  became  more  acute,  and  there 
was  every  evidence  of  an  improved  condition  and  much  en- 
richment of  the  blood.  Of  course  my  friends  could  not  fail 
to  observe  the  change,  but  for  a  time  they  were  puzzled  to 
think  what  was  the  matter  with  me.  I  kept  the  matter  secret 
for  a  long  time,  for  I  did  not  wish  to  offend  my  friends  or 
disturb  the  equanimity  of  the  good  doctors  who  had  so  long 
and  so  faithfully  administered  to  the  welfare  of  my  microbes. 
Six  months  after  I  had  taken  the  first  dose  of  microbe  killer 
I  felt  myself  entirely  cured  of  the  rheumatism.  There  were 
no  more  pains  whatever  of  any  kind.  The  fever  had  also 
entirely  gone,  and  the  piles  were  gradually  disappearing 
and  were  almost  well.  I  then  weighed  144  pounds,  and 
had  the  appearance  presented  in  the  picture  from  a  photo- 
graph on  the  opposite  page.  My  weight  now  is  205 


94  MICROBES. 


pounds.  I  felt  weak  throughout  the  first  year,  especially  at 
times,  but  this  was  to  be  expected  after  the  length  of  time 
that  I  had  been  ill.  My  blood  had  become  thin  and  was 
reduced  to  a  very  bad  condition,  so  it  required  a  long  while 
to  be  restored,  and  the  system  did  not  seem  capable  of 
restoring  it  as  fast  as  the  medicine  removed  the  microbes. 

When  I  first  experienced  an  improvement  I  was  curious 
to  know  how  the  microbe  killer  would  act  in  other  diseases, 
but  I  had  some  fears.  I  thought :  "  Suppose  I  give  my 
remedy  to  some  patient  who  is  under  the  care  of  a  doctor, 
and  suppose  he  should  die  from  the  poisons  that  that 
physician  would  be  giving  him  ;  the  blame  might  be  charged 
to  my  bottle,  and  I  might  get  indicted  for  manslaughter." 

I  knew  such  cases  had  happened,  and  I  was  well  aware  that 
the  doctors  or  their  organization  would  be  but  too  glad  to 
get  hold  of  me,  and  to  put  me  in  just  such  a  position.  They 
do  not  tolerate  any  interference  from  outside  their  own 
body,  and  although  they  themselves  may  kill,  they  do  not 
allow  other  people  even  to  cure  if  they  can  help  it.  How- 
ever, I  determined  to  manufacture  and  sell  my  medicine, 
and  to  make  a  business  of  it,  feeling  sure  that  it  would  be 
profitable ;  but  still,  and  the  more  on  this  account,  I  did 
not  feel  disposed  to  get  myself  into  any  trouble.  I  thought 
so  much  of  my  discovery  that  I  dreamed  of  it,  and  one  night 
it  seemed  to  me  that  the  people  must  have  it.  After  that  I 
could  not  resist  asking  my  workmen  if  they  knew  of  any  sick 
persons  around  the  neighborhood.  "Yes,"  said  a  negro ;  "  I 

know  a  man,  George  P ,  who  has  consumption  pretty 

bad.  His  sister  will  probably  die  of  it  soon,  for  his  whole 
family  have  died  of  it."  "  Well,"  I  thought,  "  if  that  man 
dies  nobody  can  blame  me,"  so  I  determined  to  take  the 
risk,  and  I  gave  orders  to  have  the  man  brought  to  me.  He 
came,  and  I  saw  a  mere  skeleton.  The  man  had  wasted  away 
almost  to  the  bones.  He  was  pale  and  bloodless,  with 
sunken  eyes,  and  the  hectic  flush  peculiar  to  phthisis.  He 
was  worn  out  with  a  cough,  and  reduced  to  a  terrible  degree 
of  weakness.  Death  was  staring  him  in  the  face,  and  he  well 


CAVITIES  IN  LUNG. 


TUBERCLE— CAVITY  IN  LUNG. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF   THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  95 

understood  that  the  doctors  held  out  no  hope  for  him.  I 
talked  to  him,  and  told  him  that  I  would  give  him  some- 
thing to  cure  him.  I  explained  that  it  had  cured  me,  and  I 
was  in  a  condition  little  better  than  his  own.  I  advised  him 
how  to  use  the  water,  and  requested  him  to  come  around 
again  soon  and  let  me  know  how  it  worked.  . 

Another  of  my  men  told  me  of  a  woman  who  for  six 
months  had  been  under  a  doctor's  care,  suffering  from  a 
large  growth  and  much  pain  in  one  of  her  breasts,  and  she 
wished  also  to  try  the  preparation.  But  I  explained  to  the 
man  that  I  could  not  give  it  for  any  such  purpose,  because 
if  the  woman  should  die  I  should  incur  an  awful  legal 
responsibility.  At  the  same  time  if  he  wanted  to  take  a 
gallon  there  was  one  in  the  adjoining  room.  The  gallon 
soon  disappeared,  and  I  consoled  myself  with  the  thought 
that  if  the  woman  died  I  could  conscientiously  swear  that  I 
did  not  give  her  the  water,  as  the  old  man  took  it.  Well, 

at  the  end  of  three  weeks  George  P made  his  appearance 

again  at  my  house  with  an  empty  jug,  and  he  wanted  it  filled 
again.  He  complained  of  pains  shifting  around  in  the 
neighborhood  of  his  waist,  but  said  that  otherwise  he  felt 
generally  much  better.  I  let  him  understand  that  such  a 
disease  as  his  could  not  be  got  rid  of  all  at  once,  and  that 
he  must  bear  patiently  all  that  came,  for  he  had  given  up 
all  thought  of  being  cured  and  had  reconciled  himself  to  the 
belief  that  he  must  die.  At  the  same  time  I  pointed  out  to 
him  that  I  had  also  abandoned  all  hope  of  being  cured,  and 
thought  a  speedy  death  was  inevitable,  but  I  had  been  cured 
by  means  of  this  same  preparation,  and  I  could  see  no 
reason  why  his  chances  were  not  at  least  as  good  as  mine. 
He  went  away  encouraged  and  continued  the  treatment. 
Soon  after  a  messenger  came  from  the  woman  for  more 
medicine,  and  assured  me  that  the  fearful  pains  she 
formerly  suffered  had  almost  subsided.  This  gave  me 
courage.  I  became  now  quite  fearless  and  gave  her  a 
second  bottle,  which  in  due  time  sufficed  to  cure  her.  The 
man  improved  steadily,  but  his  sister  under  the  doctor's 


g6  MICROBES. 


care  died.  In  a  short  time  I  had  twenty  female  patients  in 
Austin,  Texas,  one  with  a  cancer  on  the  tongue,  which  dis- 
appeared after  she  had  used  three  gallons.  Three  of  these 
ladies  had  been  given  up  by  the  doctors,  who  saw  no  possi- 
bility of  lengthening  their  lives  except  by  an  operation. 
Certificates  from  these  patients  have  been  published  in  the 
Austin  papers,  and  some  equally  valuable  appear  in  my 
pamphlet,  "  History  of  the  Microbe  Killer,"  which  is  given 
away  by  all  my  agents. 

My  plan  was  this :  I  used  persuasion  and  advocated  per- 
severance. No  matter  how  low  the  patient  might  be,  I  in- 
duced him  not  to  give  up  taking  the  remedy.  I  merely 
required  them  to  discharge  their  doctor  and  not  to  use  any 
other  medicine,  but  to  faithfully  take  the  water,  to  let  me 
know  what  progress  they  made  from  time  to  time,  and  on 
these  conditions  I  undertook  to  supply  all  the  medicine  that 
was  necessary.  All,  without  a  single  exception,  were  cured, 
provided  they  came  to  me  in  good  time.  If  the  doctors 
abandoned  them,  and  they  died,  no  blame  could  attach  to 
me,  so  I  had  nothing  to  fear  from  the  medical  profession. 
The  cases  that  came  to  me  were  all  different.  Some  had 
local  diseases,  others  described  their  ailments  as  being  gen- 
eral all  over  the  body.  They  told  me  all  they  had  done,  the 
quantity  of  medicine  they  had  taken  without  any  effect, 
and  the  trouble  and  misery  they  had  gone  through.  Some 
told  me  pitiful  tales  how  all  their  money  had  been  spent  in 
doctors'  bills  and  drugs  until  they  were  reduced  to  the  last 
stage  of  poverty  as  well  as  disease. 

But  notwithstanding  my  astonishing  success  in  the  treat- 
ment of  all  forms  of  disease  that  came  to  me,  I  was  very 
reluctant  to  jump  into  the  medicine  business  and  to  abandon 
my  flowers,  amid  which  I  felt  like  a  father  among  his 
children. 

During  a  stay  of  eighteen  years  in  Texas  I  had  improved 
thirty  acres,  and  got  a  fine  place  and  a  comfortable  home 
around  me,  such  an  one  as  is  not  often  seen  west  of  the 
Mississippi.  I  was  fond  of  country  life,  gloried  in  my 


*     » *'  f> 


CONSUMPTION.  — MICROBES  IN  VOMITED  MATTER. 


COKSUMJr-TION. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF   THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  §J 

flowers,  fruits,  and  trees,  loved  to  be  among  the  birds  and 
the  fish,  and  felt  all  the  enjoyment  that  belongs  to  the 
sportsman.  There  are  health  and  pleasure  in  a  life  amid 
Nature's  works  which  the  city  resident  never  enjoys,  and  I 
am  happiest  with  them.  There  are  anxieties  and  cares 
everywhere,  but  more  independence  in  the  cultivation  of 
the  soil  than  in  any  mercantile  pursuit  that  can  be  followed  ; 
and  I  was  loath  to  give  all  this  up  for  the  toil,  vexation,  and 
trouble  of  such  a  career  as  would  be  before  me  if  I  entered 
upon  the  business  that  my  successful  discovery  opened  out 
before  me.  Moreover  there  were  other  inducements  to 
keep  me  where  I  was.  I  had  expended  many  thousands  of 
dollars  in  improvements,  such  as  are  seldom  seen  in  the 
nursery  business. 

In  addition  to  flowers  I  had  gone  into  fish  culture.  I  had 
five  pools  well  stocked  with  German  carp,  and  as  my  health 
improved  I  felt  myself  young  again,  more  anxious  than 
ever  before  to  enjoy  the  pleasures  of  the  life  I  had  prepared 
for  myself,  and  more  enthusiastic  also  in  my  work.  A  steam 
pump  supplied  five  hundred  gallons  of  water  per  minute, 
and  my  fountains  were  filled  with  goldfish.  The  rosery 
contained  a  beautiful  collection  of  the  finest  flowers,  and 
thousands  of  people  had  come  to  admire  it  and  to  wander  in 
amazement  among  acres  of  pear-trees,  fruit-trees,  and  vines 
of  all  descriptions,  and  flowers  without  number  growing  in 
the  greatest  luxuriance  under  the  warm  southern  sun. 

To  a  lover  of  nature  the  delights  of  such  surroundings 
are  more  than  it  is  easy  to  describe,  and  they  are  increased 
when  is  added  the  feeling  that  they  are  one's  own  production, 
the  result  of  one's  own  conception  and  labor.  It  is  no  easy 
matter  to  tear  one's  self  from  such  surroundings  when  they 
so  thoroughly  accord  with  the  tastes  and  sympathies. 

I  at  that  time  supplied  the  Austin  people  with  my  medi- 
cine free  of  charge,  first  for  fun,  perhaps  not  realizing  the 
value  of  my  discovery.  But  the  news  leaked  out.  People 
began  to  talk  about  my  medicine,  and  some  of  them  came 
to  my  garden  and  begged  with  tears  in  their  eyes  to  have 


98  MICROBES. 


some  of  the  water.  The  wonders  it  had  done  were  common 
gossip,  and  people  were  telling  each  other  how  this  or  that 
lady  had  been  cured.  I  felt  for  these  people,  for  my  heart 
beats  for  my  neighbors  as  brothers,  and  I  had  to  neglect  my 
garden  and  my  flowers  to  manufacture  the  medicine  for  those 
around  me.  Thus  the  work  of  eighteen  years  was  thrown 
away,  for  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  my  garden  is  gone.  I 
turned  over  my  treasures  to  people  who  knew  the  value  of 
money,  and  by  whom  the  higher  merit  of  such  things  is 
not  understood.  It  was,  however,  a  painful  necessity.  The 
continuous  demand  for  my  preparation  forced  me  to  leave 
the  business  that  I  had  learned  from  my  father,  and  it  has 
led  me  into  so  much  worry  and  excitement  that  I  have  many 
times  regretted  ever  having  made  a  business  of  it.  Under 
my  groves  of  vines  and  fruit-trees,  in  the  companionship  of 
my  flowers,  and  amid  the  delightfully  congenial  surround- 
ings of  my  Texan  home  I  had  enjoyments  which  nothing 
since  has  compensated  me  for. 

My  success  with  the  medicine  of  course  satisfies  me  that 
I  must  inflict  a  lasting  injury  upon  medical  science  as  it  now 
is,  and  as  a  consequence  thousands  of  physicians  and  others 
will  become  my  enemies.  Possibly  I  may  be  regarded  as  a 
very  bad  man,  not  because  I  have  done  any  evil,  but  rather 
I  think  the  reverse,  but  because  I  have  done  something  dif- 
ferent from  others,  something  that  must  interfere  with  their 
pursuits  and  prejudices,  and  with  their  present  means  of 
livelihood.  That  is  the  way  of  the  world,  and  I  will  yet 
show  the  reader  something  of  the  kind  of  people  there  are 
about,  and  of  the  meannesses  of  which  they  will  be  guilty  to 
put  by  the  devil's  help  a  few  dollars  into  their  own  pockets. 

I  know  the  world  well  enough  to  be  quite  aware  that  as 
soon  as  my  discovery  was  well  before  the  public,  and  its 
value  known,  there  would  be  numberless  imitations,  num- 
berless thieves  ready  to  steal  my  ideas,  to  counterfeit  my 
remedy,  and  to  try  to  damage  my  reputation.  This  last 
they  cannot  do,  for  my  character  as  that  of  an  honorable, 
hard-working  citizen  is  too  well  established  in  the  State  of 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  99 

Texas,  but  they  will  try  to  make  money  out  of  the  endeavor. 
I  have  led  a  quiet  life,  minding  my  own  business,  and  not 
looking  after  other  people's,  and  contests  with  the  law  or  in 
the  courts  have  never  disturbed  me.  *  The  people  in  Austin 
had  confidence  in  me,  and  my  publications  on  horticultural 
topics  made  me  well  known,  so  that  when  the  nature  of  my 
discovery  leaked  out  I  found  it  useless  to  try  and  keep  it 
secret,  and  I  published  some  account,  first  in  the  Austin 
Statesman  of  August  30,  1887. 

That  was  the  first  announcement  made  to  the  world  that 
I  had  discovered  a  remedy  that  would  cure  disease,  and  of 
my  theory  that  there  is  but  one  disease  and  one  cause  of 
disease,  no  matter  how  varied  the  symptoms  in  different 
cases  may  be.  It  was  the  first  time,  also,  that  I  laid  claim 
to  being  the  only  man  that  could  prove  these  things,  and 
who  had  experimental  evidence  of  it  gleaned  from  a  study  of 
Nature.  I  showed  at  that  time  that  all  disease  is  caused  by 
microbes,  and  I  described  their  organisms,  producing  at  the 
same  time  testimonials  from  persons  who  had  been  cured, 
but  who  had  been  given  up  as  incurable  by  the  doctors. 
This  created  an  excitement  throughout  the  country,  and  it 
particularly  stirred  up  the  physicians  who  heard  of  it,  and 
all  interested  in  the  medical  profession.  It  was  at  this  time 
that  we  first  began  to  sell  medicine  in  a  business  way.  I 
kept  up  my  publications,  and  almost  every  week  I  had 
printed  testimonials  and  evidences  of  cure,  occasionally,  too, 
of  very  complicated  diseases.  I  was  not  interfered  with,  for 
I  killed  nobody,  and  of  course  any  man  may  cure  another 
with  water  if  he  likes. 

There  are  no  laws  against  curing  or  even  treating  another 
person,  but  if  the  person  dies,  then  if  the  man  who  treated 
him  be  not  a  physician,  protected  by  a  piece  of  parchment, 
the  case  is  one  of  manslaughter,  and  he  is  liable  to  surfer  all 
the  pains  and  penalties  of  that  offence.  When  a  person  is 
sick  he  may  put  himself  in  the  care  of  anybody  he  pleases, 
but  if  he  happen  to  die,  his  attendant  may  possibly  incur  a 
punishment  of  lifelong  imprisonment.  That  is  the  law 


100  MICROBES. 


here,  and  it  prevails  in  Europe  also.  I  therefore  ran  some 
risk,  for  although  I  knew  that  my  medicine  was  not  injuri- 
ous, yet  the  people  who  came  to  me  for  treatment  were 
often  in  the  advanced  stages  of  disease,  and  if  any  of  them 
had  died  while  taking  my  medicine,  there  were  plenty  of 
doctors  in  the  neighborhood  ready  to  take  advantage  and  to 
have  me  indicted  for  manslaughter.  And  it  was  not  the 
doctors  only,  for  success  always  creates  jealousies,  and  there 
were  people  who,  for  reasons  of  their  own,  did  not  want  me 
to  succeed,  and  they  too  would  have  taken  advantage  of 
any  opportunity  to  ruin  me. 

My  life  at  this  period  became  very  exciting,  very  different 
from  the  peaceful  times  I  had  had  among  my  flowers.  Peo- 
ple from  all  directions  wrote  to  me  for  information,  and 
sometimes  they  sent  me  a  description  of  their  ailments. 
These  letters  were  marvels  of  composition.  A  person  af- 
flicted with  some  chronic  complaint  perhaps  must  have  sat 
down  for  half  a  day's  work  to  describe  all  his  troubles. 
Possibly  he  would  fill  half  a  dozen  sheets  of  paper,  and 
close  his  letter  without  having  told  any  thing  that  an  ordi- 
nary physician  would  have  felt  it  necessary  to  know.  But  I 
knew  that  his  symptoms  were  of  secondary  importance. 
They  were  interesting  to  have,  but  not  essential,  because  all 
disease  is  due  to  the  same  cause,  and  requires  but  one  cure. 

I  could  not  make  my  correspondents  always  understand 
this.  They  had  been  accustomed  to  have  the  most  minute 
inquiries  made  by  their  doctors,  and  they  could  not  compre- 
hend how  I  could  go  to  work  and  cure  people  without  get- 
ting the  minutest  information  and  asking  them  an  infinite 
lot  of  questions.  They  seemed  to  think  it  impossible  that  I 
could  put  up  the  right  medicine  without  knowing  every  par- 
ticular, and  perhaps  some  of  them  may  have  felt  a  little  dis- 
trust on  that  account.  But  if  their  confidence  failed  them  it 
was  not  to  be  wondered  at.  They  had  been  deceived  so  often 
that  they  were  naturally  suspicious,  and  when  people  who 
wanted  all  details  had  failed  and  I  undertook  to  cure  with- 
out such  minute  information  their  suspicions  were  not  likely 
to  be  lessened.  I  often  had  great  difficulty  in  explaining 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  IOI 

this,  and  that  I  had  only  one  remedy  and  one  way  of  using 
it,  which  is  all  that  is  necessary  since  there  can  be  but  one 
cause  of  disease. 

Then  again  they  could  hardly  believe  that  I  who  had  my- 
self been  so  long  a  victim  to  disease,  and  who  had  been  so  often 
deceived, — I,  too,  a  nurseryman  and  florist,  could  have  discov- 
ered a  remedy  which  thousands  of  physicians  and  men  of 
science  had  been  looking  for  in  vain.  It  perhaps  seemed 
strange.  There  were  men  engaged  in  scientific  studies,  devo- 
ting their  lives  to  the  treatment  of  disease,  to  the  examina- 
tion of  remedies,  aided  with  money,  power,  and  protection 
from  the  law,  with  all  the  resources  possible  in  this  world  to 
such  kind  of  research,  and  they  had  failed,  while  I,  a  plain 
man,  from  a  so-called  backwoods  country,  without  any  such 
advantages,  with  very  little  money,  and  without  any  protec- 
tion, had  been  able  to  start  a  discovery  of  my  own  which 
would  revolutionize  medical  science,  upturn  all  old  theories, 
stop  the  processes  of  deception  practised  by  doctors, 'en- 
lighten the  people  on  matters  most  important  to  themselves, 
and  all  by  a  simple  and  efficacious  cure.  This  was  done  by 
simply  putting  natural  proofs  before  the  public,  so  that  they 
could  not  fail  to  believe  what  they  saw,  in  place  of  going  out 
of  my  way  to  describe  some  evil  spirit  that  I  had  not  seen. 
I  had  raised  a  foundation  that  no  power  in  the  world  can 
break  down,  and  the  reader  who  will  follow  me  to  the  end 
will  see  that  I  have  been  able  to  ward  off  all  kinds  of  attacks, 
some  of  them  of  the  most  infamous  and  malicious  character, 
absolutely  untruthful,  and  based  upon  ignorance  where  they 
were  not  inspired  by  the  worst  motives.  I  have  defeated 
such  attacks  invariably,  and  with  the  help  of  the  public 
whom  I  shall  have  enlightened  I  can  go  on  and  beat  down 
all  opposition  whether  it  comes  from  a  want  of  knowledge 
or  from  evil  minds  and  jealousy.  My  army  of  friends,  pa- 
tients, and  supporters  is  growing  day  by  day,  and  there  are 
hundreds,  nay  thousands,  of  physicians  assisting  me  in  the 
exposure  of  medical  science  as  it  is  taught  in  the  schools  and 
practised  in  the  hospitals  and  medical  colleges. 

It  was  at  Austin,  Texas,  my  own  home,  that  the  people 


102  MICROBES. 


first  enabled  me  to  introduce  this  medicine  throughout  the 
broad  land  of  America,  and  they  did  so  because  they  saw  I 
cured  the  people  who  came  to  me.  Many  of  them  had  influ- 
ential friends  elsewhere  in  the  United  States,  and  they  sent 
to  them  accounts  of  the  fame  of  my  discovery.  Frequently 
they  forwarded  medicine  at  the  same  time  to  persons  whom 
they  knew  to  be  in  need  of  treatment,  and  often  my  circulars 
went  with  it.  The  only  publication  I  had  at  that  time  was  a 
small  four-page  print,  and  it  brought  me  hundreds  of  peo- 
ple who  benefited  by  the  treatment  and  then  themselves 
advertised  the  wonderful  powers  of  my  discovery.  But  my 
business  grew  so  rapidly  and  so  earnest  a  desire  was  evinced 
to  know  more  about  my  medicine  that  I  soon  found  it 
necessary  to  enlarge  my  publications,  and  what  was  at  first 
but  four  small  pages  grew  in  two  years  to  a  large  octavo 
pamphlet  of  fifty  pages.  This  contains  in  not  the  least  valu- 
able portion  a  number  of  testimonials  from  persons  who 
have  been  benefited  or  cured  by  my  treatment,  and  they  are 
unimpeachable. 

Still  the  public  curiosity  was  not  satisfied.  Intense  inter- 
est was  very  naturally  felt  in  the  discovery,  which  was  recog- 
nized as  something  not  only  wonderful  in  its  effects  but 
evidently  calculated  to  bring  about  a  sweeping  reform  in 
the  management  of  disease  and  in  the  methods  of  medical 
men.  Further  than  that,  I  had  in  self-defence  to  protect 
myself  against  the  machinations  of  unprincipled  people,  and 
for  that  there  seemed  to  be  nothing  better  than  to  take  the 
public  into  my  confidence  as  fully  as  possible.  Hence  the 
reason  for  my  preparing  this  book,  which  is  an  emanation 
simply  of  my  own  brain,  with  a  statement  of  my  own 
thoughts  and  experiences.  It  is  original.  I  am  not  in- 
debted to  any  other  books  for  ideas  or  opinions,  nor  to 
any  hearsay  evidence  upon  the  topics  touched  upon.  It 
is  my  own  property,  the  result  of  my  own  hard  work,  and 
I  hope  that  it  will  be  respected  as  such,  and  that  no  one  will 
steal  or  pilfer  its  contents. 

There  is  no  permission  from  me  to  anybody  to  use  my 


HEADQUARTERS,  813  FIFTH  AVENUE,  !NEVV  YOR1 


DEVELOPMENT  OF   THE  MICROBE  KILLER.          103 

writings.  Whoever  takes  them  steals,  and  when  the  thief  is 
caught  justice  and  the  law  shall  be  meted  out  to  him. 

Almost  from  the  first  the  cures  I  made  with  my  medicine 
were  reported  far  and  wide.  The  reputation  of  my  discovery 
spread  rapidly.  People  found  that  they  could  do  without 
doctors.  Many  who  had  been  under  physicians'  care  took 
it  and  found  themselves  benefited  as  they  never  had  been 
before.  Others  had  recourse  to  it  as  soon  as  they  felt  them- 
selves sick,  and  they  were  relieved  so  readily  and  satisfac- 
torily that  they  had  no  occasion  to  apply  to  a  doctor  at  all. 
It  was  therefore  quite  natural  and  not  at  all  to  be  wondered 
at  that  physicians  should  begin  to  take  an  interest  in  it. 
They  found  their  fees  becoming  fewer,  and  they  wanted  to 
learn  something  about  a  discovery  which  was  thus  so  mate- 
rially affecting  their  interests.  But  before  learning  anything 
they  condemned  it.  Their  plan  was  to  hang  their  man  first 
and  try  him  after.  All  that  they  knew  about  the  microbe 
killer  when  they  first  abused  it  was  that  it  was  interfering 
with  their  business.  It  has  continued  to  interfere  with  their 
business,  and  it  will  interfere  yet  more,  so  that  they  cannot 
but  be  a  little  anxious  about  it.  They  began  by  telling  the 
most  wonderful  stories  about  it.  They  described  to  their 
female  patients  what  a  terrible  thing  it  was,  and  that  if  they 
took  it,  it  would  in  a  short  time  burn  up  the  coating  of  the 
stomach,  producing  incurable  disease,  and  ultimately  death. 
But  while  painting  this  alarming  picture  they  saw  that,  like 
all  such  things,  it  would  have  its  day,  and  then  die  out. 
They  gave  it  twelve  months  in  which  to  disappear  and  be 
heard  of  no  more. 

I  heard  all  this,  and  it  amused  me,  the  more-  so  because  I 
found  that  some  of  the  doctors  who  so  energetically  con- 
demned it  were  using  it  themselves.  Life  is  sweet,  and 
while  there  is  life  there  is  hope.  AZgroto  dum  anima  spes 
est.  So  the  sick  doctors,  when  their  own  medicine  failed 
them,  had  enough  hope  left  to  try  mine,  and  they  got  well. 
But  they  would  not  give  me  credit  for  it.  They  were  afraid, 
because  every  sick  man  cured  by  me  was  so  much  loss  to 


IO4  MICROBES. 


them.  So  they  went  on  abusing  me,  and  at  the  same  time 
seeking  my  help.  How  could  I  avoid  laughing  at  such  a 
scene  ? 

The  demand  continued  to  increase.  It  grew  beyond  my 
ability  to  meet  it,  and  I  was  forced  into  making  arrange- 
ments for  meeting  the  requirements  of  what  had  now  become 
a  most  successful  business.  Accordingly  I  tore  down  my 
little  seed-store  and  erected  a  two-story  building,  46  feet  front 
by  160  feet  deep,  of  an  elegant  design,  as  the  illustration 
shows.  This  structure  is  still  standing  at  Austin,  and  has 
become  the  headquarters  of  the  business,  from  which  seven- 
teen other  factories  controlled  by  as  many  companies  have 
sprung  into  existence  within  twenty-four  months,  while  the 
discoverer  of  the  microbe  killer  has  changed  his  residence 
into  a  beautiful  mansion  on  Fifth  Avenue,  in  New  York, 
facing  Central  Park.  There  it  is  that  these  lines  are  written, 
and  thence  the  whole  business  throughout  the  world  is  con- 
trolled. This  indicates  the  success  that  has  fallen  to  me, 
and  the  appreciation  which  the  public  have  bestowed  upon 
my  remedy,  for  people  are  not  slow  to  determine  the  merits 
of  something  that  is  what  it  is  represented  to  be,  and  there 
are  none  of  us  of  sane  mind  who  do  not  set  good  health 
as  higher  in  value  than  gold. 


I 
CHAPTER    IX. 

HISTORY   OF    MY   DISCOVERY. 

I  WILL  now  go  back  to  the  first  few  months  while  my 
discovery  was  before  the  public.  This  will  necessitate  the 
narration  of  several  interesting  incidents  which  have  taken 
place  in  the  interval. 

It  will  readily  be  understood  that  my  correspondence  has 
been  large.  For  some  time  I  was  in  direct  personal  com- 
munication with  my  patients.  They  would  write  me  full 
particulars  with  all  details  of  their  complaints  as  far  as 
they  could  give  them,  and  all  such  letters  I  replied  to  per- 
sonally, giving  advice  as  to  the  best  way  to  use  the  remedy 
and  all  necessary  instructions.  But  people  soon  acquired 
confidence.  They  soon  learned  what  to  do.  The  reputa- 
tion of  the  medicine  spread,  and  people  ordered  it  without 
writing  any  particulars  or  asking  any  information.  In  this 
way  thousands  of  people  have  availed  themselves  of  it,  but 
of  whose  maladies  I  know  nothing.  The  information  that 
came  to  me  was  surprising,  but  it  is  not  necessary  to  detail 
it  here.  Where  full  statements  were  given  I  learned  the 
varieties  of  the  disease  that  doctors  described,  the  effects  of 
climate,  the  quantity  of  medicine  that  had  been  swallowed, 
the  large  sums  of  money  spent  in  fees  and  drugs,  and  then 
at  the  end  of  all,  how  the  doctors  had  entirely  failed  to  do 
any  good.  Very  often  the  symptoms  were  worse  than  they 
had  been  at  the  beginning,  and  sometimes  I  heard  how 
friends  of  my  correspondents  had  died  under  the  physician's 
treatment. 

105 


106  MICROBES. 


I  had  letters  containing  pitiful  stories  of  distress  and 
misery  quite  unalleviated  by  the  medicines  prescribed,  and 
many  wrote  me,  who  said  that  they  were  bedridden ; 
others,  that  they  were  nearly  helpless  and  unable  to  move, 
and  others  again,  whose  powers  to  work  and  earn  their 
living  had  been  terribly  interfered  with.  I  was  at  times 
amazed  at  the  revelations  put  before  me,  and  found  in 
all  an  endorsement  of  the  results  of  my  own  experiments 
and  a  further  proof  that  the  doctors  ignore  Nature's  teach- 
ings and  work  in  ignorance  and  darkness.  When  a  patient 
came  to  me,  or  wrote  me  for  advice,  I  always  explained 
to  him  his  situation,  describing  the  action  of  microbes,  and 
how,  when  thoroughly  in  control  of  the  human  system,  they 
produce  a  general  condition  of  fermentation  and  rotten- 
ness. I  let  them  always  understand  that  a  total  renovation 
was  necessary,  that  the  purification  of  the  blood  must  be 
complete,  that  no  microbes  or  causes  for  fermentation  must 
be  left  behind.  This  was  an  absolute  necessity ;  and  then  it 
would  have  to  be  seen  how  much  healthy  portion  remained. 
The  whole  treatment  was  different  from  any  thing  they  had 
been  accustomed  to,  and  my  advice  may  sometimes  have 
opened  their  eyes  and  given  them  new  ideas,  but  I  can  con- 
scientiously and  truthfully  say  that  in  every  instance  where 
my  counsel  was  listened  to  and  my  instructions  were  followed, 
a  cure  was  effected,  no  matter  what  name  the  doctors  may 
have  given  to  the  complaint.  Where  advice  was  not  fol- 
lowed, when  the  patient  went  by  his  own  judgment  and 
rejected  the  rules  laid  down  for  him,  the  treatment  was  not 
entirely  successful,  and  I  never  expected  that  it  would  be. 
Physicians  themselves  constantly  have  cases  of  that  kind, — 
cases  where  strict  instructions  are  given  and  the  patient 
either  will  not  or  cannot  carry  them  out.  The  result  is 
rarely  satisfactory,  and  the  patient  must  then  be  held  respon- 
sible for  any  failure.  So  in  the  use  of  my  discovery,  if  ad- 
vice is  followed  and  the  medicine  be  taken  properly,  a  cure 
must  be  expected  ;  if  otherwise,  the  patient  has  only  himself 
to  blame. 


PILES.— MICROBES  FROM  RECTUM. 


GANGRENE. 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY.  IO/ 

I  treated  all  my  patients  with  the  same  medicine,  just  as 
in  my  garden  I  would  treat  all  weeds  alike.  There  are  end- 
less varieties  of  weeds,  a  very  large  number  of  which  are 
familiar  to  me  by  name,  but  that  would  not  cause  me  to 
pause  about  their  extermination,  or  the  method  of  effecting 
it.  What  matters  it  what  the  scientific  name  of  a  weed 
may  be  ?  so  long  as  it  is  a  weed,  that  suffices.  It  is  swept 
away.  We  do  not  adopt  one  method  of  removal  for  one 
kind,  and  another  for  another.  It  may  be  interesting  to 
the  botanist  to  classify  his  plants,  to  name  them  and  describe 
them  and  to  tell  us  what  their  properties  should  be ;  but 
that  kind  of  knowledge  is  of  only  secondary  moment  to  the 
practical  gardener  who  wants  to  see  the  most  vigorous 
health  and  growth  among  things  that  are  his  special  care. 

Suppose  a  gardener  were  to  see  one  of  his  flower-beds 
overrun  with  weeds  of  various  descriptions,  and  were  to  tell 
his  assistant  first  to  classify  those  weeds,  then  to  pull  up 
one  kind,  afterward  to  cut  off  another,  and  so  on  ;  by  the 
time  the  work  was  accomplished  the  flowers  would  be 
smothered  to  death,  and  new  weeds  would  be  coming  up 
where  the  first  had  been  removed. 

So  it  is  with  disease  in  the  human  body.  We  are  not  to 
waste  time  and  endanger  the  patient's  health  by  trifling 
about  special  symptoms.  We  know  the  person  is  sick. 
We  know  the  cause  of  his  sickness  :  let  us  then  remove  that 
cause,  and  the  person  will  be  well.  If  we  choose  to  talk 
among  ourselves  about  his  symptoms,  that  will  not  harm 
anybody,  but  we  have  no  right  to  endanger  a  patient's 
life  or  to  delay  his  cure.  Did  you  ever  go  into  a  hospital 
when  a  leading  physician  is  going  around  the  wards  ?  A 
new  patient  may  have  come  in,  whose  case  particularly 
interests  him.  He  will  stop  at  the  bedside  of  that  patient, 
and  although  the  poor  fellow  may  be  too  sick  to  rise  or 
turn,  he  will  spend  half  an  hour  pounding  and  thumping 
him,  listening  to  his  heart  and  his  lungs,  and  going  through 
a  tedious  ceremony,  simply  to  try  and  diagnose  some 
minute  points  which  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the 


IO8  MICROBES. 


cure  or  with  the  mode  of  treatment  that  the  disease  calls 
for.  It  looks  scientific.  It  tends  to  surround  the  doctor's 
calling  with  a  halo  of  mystery.  It  deceives  the  patient  and 
the  public.  It  keeps  them  in  ignorance.  It  hides  from 
them  the  true  simplicity  of  medicine  and  disease,  and  leads 
them  to  suppose  that  there  can  be  no  chance  for  them  in 
this  world  or  the  next  if  they  attempt  to  cure  themselves 
without  a  physician's  aid.  Diagnosing  disease  is  simply 
blindfolding  the  public,  but  physicians  dare  not  acknowl- 
edge it,  for  if  they  did,  their  glorious  work  would  be  undone, 
their  services  would  not  be  needed,  and  they  would  have 
to  fall  back  upon  other  occupations. 

I  have  ever  been  a  close  observer  of  human  nature  and 
of  the  world  and  I  have  seen  a  great  deal  of  it,  but 
never  till  my  discovery  came  before  the  public,  was  I  aware 
of  the  numberless  tricks  and  devices  that  are  used  to  deceive 
and  take  advantage  of  the  sick.  There  seems  to' be  some- 
thing very  heartless  in  a  system  which  enables  any  set  of 
men  to  avail  themselves  of  the  time  when  a  person  is  suffer- 
ing and  perhaps  in  despair,  to  prey  upon  his  credulities  in 
order  to  draw  money  from  his  purse.  Some  doctors  do  this 
literally  and  without  compunction.  They  look  upon  a 
patient's  misfortune  as  their  opportunity,  and  they  amass 
money  by  just  such  opportunities.  Many  physicians  are 
more  regardful  of  their  own  honor  and  the  people's  rights, 
and  when  they  waste  time  in  diagnosis,  it  is  done  in  igno- 
rance. They  believe  they  are  enlightening  themselves  and 
serving  their  patient,  not  knowing  that  all  the  trouble  they 
take  is  unnecessary. 

While  expressing  this  opinion,  I  cannot  be  blind  to  the 
spirit  of  charity  which  abounds  in  the  medical  profession, 
whose  members  certainly  do  more  for  their  fellow-men  with- 
out thought  or  hope  of  reward,  than  any  people  who  depend 
upon  their  own  efforts  for  their  livelihood.  People  owe 
more  to  the  physician  than  they  acknowledge  or  perhaps 
realize,  nevertheless  medical  science  is  imperfect,  medical 
ethics  are  obstructive,  and  medical  men,  even  when  acting 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY.  1 09 

up  to  the  fullest  requirements  of  their  profession,  are  too 
often  in  a  rut  that  leads  them  to  error  and  militates  against 
the  best  interests  of  the  sick. 

There  is  much  evidence  at  hand  of  the  value  of  my  dis- 
covery. It  may  not  be  necessary.  I  have  probably  ad- 
duced enough  already  to  satisfy  my  readers,  but  I  wish  to 
make  this  work  as  complete  and  as  thorough  as  possible.  I 
must  therefore  cover  the  whole  ground,  in  justice  both  to 
myself  and  to  the  public.  I  have  already  mentioned  that 
some  of  the  doctors  foretold  how  my  discovery  would  go  the 
way  of  quack  medicines,  by  which  they  meant  that  in  a  few 
months  it  would  be  forgotten.  The  present  state  of  my 
business,  the  facts  that  there  are  seventeen  factories  engaged 
in  making  the  microbe  killer,  that  it  is  already  established 
throughout  the  United  States  and  is  being  sought  after  in 
Europe,  in  other  parts  of  the  great  American  continent,  and 
in  Australia,  all  go  to  show  what  false  prophets  those 
doctors  were.  In  place  of  going  the  way  of  worthless 
quack  medicines,  the  microbe  killer  has  become  an  essential 
in  thousands  of  homes,  and  it  has  cured  thousands  of  people 
also  whom  the  doctors  had  failed  to  relieve.  It  has  risen 
so  rapidly  into  public  favor  that  it  has  been  difficult  to 
keep  pace  with  the  demand  that  has  been  made  for  it,  and 
our  trouble  has  been  not  to  get  it  recognized  and  sold,  but 
to  manufacture  it  fast  enough  to  supply  the  public  needs. 
Its  success  has  demonstrated  its  merits  and  it  has  shown 
also  that  it  supplied  a  want,  that  people's  confidence  in 
medical  science  was  failing,  that  they  were  ready  to  grasp  at 
something  that  promised  to  enlighten  them  and  cure  them, 
and  at  the  same  time  to  release  them  from  the  bondage  in 
which  they  were  held  by  their  doctors. 

Other  physicians  treated  the  matter  less  lightly.  Instead 
of  ostensibly  regarding  it  as  of  no  importance  and  soon  to 
perish  for  want  of  support  they  cautioned  their  patients 
against  it.  Some  said  boldly  that  it  was  dangerous,  that  it 
would  destroy  the  tissues  and  intensify  disease  instead  of 
mitigating  it.  In  reply  to  such  imaginings  people  came 


1 10  MICROBES. 


forward  who  had  been  cured,  and  others  mentioned  the 
names  of  friends  who  had  likewise  been  cured.  Of  course 
there  was  no  getting  over  facts  like  that,  so  then  the  doctors 
took  other  ground.  They  acknowledged  that  possibly  it 
might  have  some  beneficial  effects  in  diseases  produced  by 
microbes,  but  that  it  would  be  absolutely  worthless  and 
even  dangerous  in  such  diseases  as  are  not  caused  by 
microbes.  When  I  heard  this  I  offered  to  give  my  check 
for  one  hundred  dollars  to  any  one  who  would  name  a 
disease  that  is  not  caused  by  microbes,  and  who  could  prove 
his  position.  The  offer  has  not  yet  been  accepted,  and  it 
still  remains  open.  Here  is  a  chance  for  some  of  the  young 
students  at  our  medical  schools  and  colleges,  to  any  one  of 
whom  I  shall  be  most  happy  to  render  that  amount  of 
pecuniary  assistance  if  he  will  earn  it  by  complying  with  the 
conditions.  His  discovery  would  immortalize  him.  He 
might  carry  his  piece  of  parchment  out  into  the  world  with 
the  fame  of  having  been  a  successful  explorer  in  a  region 
where  others  had  groped  in  darkness.  He  would  have 
made  a  discovery  that  never  has  been  made,  despite  all  the 
knowledge  of  human  ills  and  all  the  science  of  which  the 
medical  profession  claims  to  have  a  monopoly. 

Those  persons  who  have  followed  me  through  the  preced- 
ing pages  will  see  readily  why  the  reward  has  never  been 
called  for.  Disease  is  fermentation,  and  fermentation  with- 
out microbes  is  impossible.  Therefore  disease  must  be 
accompanied  by  microbes.  You  cannot  have  an  effect 
without  a  cause,  and  where  a  particular  effect  can  be  pro- 
duced only  by  one  cause,  it  is  at  once  apparent  what  that 
cause  must  be.  Nothing  is  easier  than  to  talk  and  to  say 
what  is  and  what  is  not,  but  talking  is  of  no  value  in  an 
assertion  without  proof,  and  directly  we  come  down  to 
proof  my  position  is  impregnable.  The  doctors  who  say 
that  disease  can  exist  without  microbes  are  either  ignorant 
or  guilty  of  wilful  deception,  and  they  show  their  weakness 
by  refusing  my  offer.  If  they  are  ignorant  they  are  not  fit 
to  have  the  responsibility  for  human  life.  If  they  are 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY.  Ill 

capable  of  wilfully  deceiving  their  patients  in  direct  viola- 
tion of  the  dictates  of  their  own  better  knowledge  they  are 
unworthy  of  any  position  among  honest  men,  still  less  of  a 
place  in  the  ranks  of  a  profession  that  has  so  much  preten- 
sion as  that  of  medicine.  They  are  unworthy  of  public 
respect  or  public  confidence.  They  are  merely  human 
vultures  preying  upon  the  ignorance  and  credulity  and 
weaknesses  and  sufferings  of  their  fellow-men. 

But  all  the  efforts  of  the  doctors  fell  harmless, — not  from 
lack  of  energy,  or  from  any  want  of  repetition.  They  were 
poured  out  with  zeal  worthy  of  a  better  cause  and  with  re- 
lentless violence.  They  came  as  the  efforts  of  men  in  a  life- 
and-death  struggle,  and  so  in  truth  they  were,  for  the  science 
of  medicine  in  the  form  now  held  up  before  the  people  can- 
not stand  against  the  developments  which  my  discovery  will 
certainly  make.  But  it  had  no  effect.  The  cures  effected 
by  the  microbe  killer  were  more  convincing  evidence  than 
all  the  prophecies  and  forebodings  of  interested  persons.  A 
man  cured  of  a  disease  when  the  doctors  had  failed  was  an 
advertisement  which  could  not  be  ignored,  and  there  were 
thousands  of  such  advertisements  all  over  the  country. 
Cures  were  effected  in  such  unlikely  cases  that  they  could 
not  fail  to  receive  attention,  and  the  wonderful  work  of  my 
discovery  was  more  than  an  answer  to  the  dreary  talk  of  the 
doctors.  The  evidence  startled  the  profession,  and  its  mem- 
bers saw  that  if  things  went  on  as  they  were  going,  ruin 
would  stare  them  in  the  face.  They  discussed  the  situation. 
They  realized  that  the  law  would  not  help  them,  for  I  had 
infringed  nobody  else's  rights  while  exercising  those  which 
belong  to  every  citizen  of  this  free  country.  I  had  done 
no  harm  to  any  of  my  patients.  I  had  killed  nobody.  I 
had  only  endangered  the  prospects  of  men  who  were  less 
useful,  and  multitudes  bore  testimony  that  in  doing  so  I 
had  rendered  good  service  to  suffering  humanity.  The  only 
practical  course  that  seemed  to  be  left  open  to  my  enemies 
was  to  devise  an  imitation  of  the  microbe  killer.  That  they 
thought  would  at  least  counteract  the  work  of  my  discovery 


112  MICROBES. 


and  spoil  its  reputation,  and  if  any  injury  should  be  done 
by  their  imitation,  they  could  readily  put  the  blame  upon  me. 

It  was  a  fiendish  scheme,  but  the  world  is  full  of  adven- 
turers and  unscrupulous  people,  who  are  ready  to  steal  the 
product  of  other  people's  brains  and  to  prey  upon  their 
fellow-men.  They  cared  nothing  for  the  law.  They  rather 
sought  litigation,  knowing  that  justice  costs  money,  and  that 
if  I  had  not  enough  wherewith  to  purchase  that  to  which  I 
was  entitled,  they  knew  that  they  could  drive  me  to  the 
wall.  But  fortunately  I  was  not  without  means,  although 
if  I  had  been,  if  I  had  not  been  able  to  let  the  people  learn 
the  truth,  or  to  fight  my  cause  in  the  courts,  I  do  not  see 
how  I  could  possibly  have"  made  as  much  progress  as  I  have. 

This,  however,  is  always  the  case.  Numberless  inventions 
that  would  be  of  the  utmost  value  to  humanity  are  con- 
stantly being  held  back,  because  the  owners  are  not  strong 
enough  to  put  them  before  the  people,  and  to  protect  them- 
selves against  the  harpies  who  would  destroy  them.  And 
very  frequently  inventions  that  have  wrought  much  public 
good,  and  have  been  active  agents  in  furthering  human 
progress,  have  brought  no  profit  whatever  to  their  inventor, 
although  they  may  have  given  wealth  and  influence  to  peo- 
ple who  came  after  and  took  advantage  of  his  work.  The 
world  is  full  of  such  examples,  and  my  enemies  doubtless 
thought  that  if  they  were  unscrupulous  enough,  they  could 
force  me  to  enter  the  same  list.  But  they  were  wonderfully 
deceived.  I  had  the  power  to  protect  myself,  and  I  used  it. 

For  four  months  I  was  undisturbed.  But  henceforward 
litigation  began,  and  I  had  a  year  of  lawsuits.  This  was 
something  entirely  new  to  me.  I  had  never  been  a  litigant. 
I  had  always  tried  to  mind  my  own  business,  and  to  do 
harm  to  no  man.  So  when  I  had,  as  I  did  sometimes,  to 
pass  a  week  in  and  about  the  courts,  I  felt  an  entirely  novel 
sensation.  I  appeared  in  different  characters,  sometimes  as 
plaintiff,  at  others  as  defendant.  There  is  no  occasion  here 
to  mention  names  and  to  go  into  too  much  detail,  the  more 
especially  as  I  have  issued  a  separate  pamphlet  on  the  sub- 


CARBUNCLE  ON  THE  NECK. 


BACILLUS  ANTHRAC1S— CULT'D. 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY.  113 


ject,  which  may  be  had  free  of  charge  on  application  to  any 
of  the  companies  who  are  manufacturing  my  microbe  killer. 
In  that  circular  I  have  told  how  some  eight  or  ten  different 
imitations  of  my  medicine  were  introduced,  and  I  have  ex- 
plained the  tricks  which  my  opponents  descended  to,  and 
described  the  fury  of  the  medical  profession  at  the  failure  of 
their  efforts  to  ruin  me. 

But  it  is  necessary  that  I  should  not  pass  this  part  of  my 
subject  by  altogether  in  silence.  I  will  therefore  convey  to 
the  reader  some  idea  of  the  miserable  meannesses  to  which 
some  persons  had  recourse,  people  whom  I  had  never  in- 
jured, but  who  were  actuated  by  malevolence,  simply  be- 
cause my  discovery,  to  which  I  was  fully  entitled,  chanced 
to  interfere  with  their  medical  aspirations,  or  the  sale  of 
drugs. 

The  first  notification  that  I  had  of  the  attack  about  to  be 
made  upon  me  was  in  the  shape  of  an  advertisement  painted 
on  my  own  fence.  It  bore  the  name  of  a  doctor  and 
druggist  who  sold  and  extensively  advertised  some  nostrum 
for  curing  constipation,  and  he  now  added  to  the  usual  form 
the  words  :  "  It  kills  microbes."  On  another  part  of  the 
fence  he  told  how  his  medicine  would  "  cure  consumption." 
I  was  amused,  and  smiled  at  the  thing.  My  neighbors 
called  upon  me  and  smiled  too.  "  You  see  he  is  getting 
mad,"  said  one.  "  He  wants  to  make  the  public  believe 
that  he,  too,  kills  microbes,"  says  another.  So  everybody 
understood  the  trick,  and  presently  the  word  "  consump- 
tion "  was  obliterated,  and  the  word  "  constipation  "  was 
substituted,  which  made  the  thing  more  ridiculous  than 
before,  and  passers  by  seldom  failed  to  laugh  at  the  absurd 
effort  to  injure  me.  What  was  the  consequence  ?  Merely 
that  the  sales  of  my  medicine  went  on  faster  than  before, 
and  the  walls  of  my  factory  rose  higher.  Instead  of  injuring 
my  business  the  scheme  seemed  to  help  it.  The  fact  was  it 
advertised  me.  People  understood  it,  and  they  were  more 
disposed  to  condemn  such  trickery  than  to  permit  them- 
selves to  be  led  away  by  it.  I  do  not  think  that  true  man- 


1 14  MICROBES. 


hood  will  ever  come  down  to  the  level  of  maliciously  injuring 
another  ;  neither  will  it  countenance  any  thing  that  is  mani- 
festly unfair  and  unjust.  I  had  hosts  of  friends  among  my 
neighbors  who  stood  by  me,  and  who  treated  with  more 
than  contempt  the  paltry  efforts  that  were  being  used 
against  me  by  unprincipled  and  jealous  opponents. 

In  view,  therefore,  of  the  failure  to  destroy  my  business, 
and  of  the  manifest  truth  that  their  schemes  were  only 
stimulating  a  demand  for  my  medicine,  these  people  planned 
a  new  device,  which  they  thought  at  least  would  check  my 
prosperity,  if  it  did  not  drive  me  out  of  the  field.  They 
formed  a  company,  and  among  the  incorporators  was  an 
old  man  whom  I  had  cured  of  asthma.  He  had  been 
afflicted  for  twenty  years,  and  had  tried  every  thing  that 
physicians  could  recommend,  but  without  deriving  any 
benefit.  At  last  he  came  to  me,  and,  after  a  due  course  of 
treatment,  his  cough  had  left  him,  his  breathing  became 
natural,  he  had  no  spasms,  and,  in  fact,  he  acknowledged 
himself  cured ;  all  of  which  facts  I  afterwards  brought  out 
in  open  court. 

I  felt  sorry  for  the  old  man, — sorry  that  he  had  lent  him- 
self to  be  made  a  tool  of  by  designing  people  to  injure  me 
who  had  relieved  him  of  a  terrible  disease,  and  had  so  far 
contributed  to  the  happiness  of  his  remaining  years  of  life. 
I  had  lengthened  his  days  also,  for  he  could  not  have  lived 
long  in  the  condition  he  was  in  when  he  came  to  me  ;  and 
this  was  the  way  he  showed  his  gratitude.  He  turned 
around  and  forced  me  into  the  courts,  to  annoy  me  and 
exhaust  my  means,  and  all  because  the  other  side,  who  were 
themselves  gratuitously  seeking  to  close  up  my  business, 
had  paid  him  to  try  and  ruin  his  benefactor.  Surely  if  there 
be  a  hell  it  must  be  the  right  place  for  such  as  he. 

I  cannot  avoid  narrating  some  of  my  experiences,  and  it 
is  better  I  should  not,  for  they  illustrate  the  circumstances 
under  which  I  put  my  discovery  before  the  public,  and  they 
demonstrate  the  obstacles  which  any  one  may  expect  to 
have  to  overcome  who  has  any  thing  valuable  which  nobody 


HISTOR  Y  OF  MY  DISCO  VER  Y.  1 1 5 

else  possesses.  One  day  I  received  a  package  containing 
some  newspapers  and  advertisements ;  also  a  jug  and  a 
circular,  and  at  the  same  time  I  received  a  letter  from  one 
of  my  agents  asking  for  an  explanation.  Then  the  whole 
scheme  became  apparent  to  me.  Every  thing  was  prepared 
in  such  a  way  as  to  lead  the  public  to  suppose  that  it  was 
my  medicine.  The  jug  in  which  my  medicine  is  sold  was 
exactly  imitated.  The  name  was  the  same.  The  directions 
were  identical.  The  wrappers,  circulars,  advertisements, — 
all  corresponded  with  mine.  The  only  difference  was  in  the 
price.  Trouble  soon  began.  One  person  wrote  me  that  he 
had  procured  the  microbe  killer  of  my  agent  for  $2.50, 
whereas  before  I  had  charged  him  $3.  Another  wrote  me 
that  he  had  sent  a  post-office  order  for  $6  a  week  before 
and  that  he  had  heard  nothing  about  it.  On  inquiry  I 
found  that  he  addressed  it  carelessly,  although  he  had  had 
the  order  made  payable  to  me,  and  consequently  nobody 
else  could  collect  the  money. 

Another  patient  complained  that  the  last  medicine  sent 
to  him  was  different  from  what  he  had  before,  and  so  it 
went  on  again.  Every  thing  I  used  and  printed  was  so 
closely  imitated  that  people  did  not  know  that  they  were 
not  receiving  my  medicine.  The  only  difference  was  in  the 
medicine  itself,  and  there  they  could  not  imitate  my  mi- 
crobe killer,  so  the  person  who  was  deceived  by  them  may 
possibly  have  taken  something  that  was  even  injurious,  and, 
not  knowing  the  deception  imposed  upon  him,  he  would  be 
likely  to  blame  me  if  the  medicine  proved  to  be  of  no  effect. 
That  company  employed  the  most  worthless  characters  that 
they  could  get  together.  It  did  not  matter.  Their  purpose 
was  less  to  start  a  business  for  themselves  than  to  destroy 
mine.  They  sent  out  dodgers  with  my  own  reading  matter 
in  them.  They  praised  the  virtues  of  their  medicine  much 
louder  than  I  ever  had  occasion  to  do  with  mine  ;  and  in  all 
their  advertising  they  paid  particular  attention  to  those 
localities  where  the  microbe  killer  was  best  known  and  had 
been  most  successful.  One  of  their  dodgers  read  thus: 


Il6  MICROBES. 


"  A  Life  Elixir  at  last.  A  physician,  after  life-long  study, 
has  discovered  the  greatest  remedy  on  earth.  It  cures  all 
microbe  diseases,  such  as  Yellow-Fever,  Cholera,  Consump- 
tion, Cancer,  Catarrh,  and  a  host  of  others." 

The  country  is  overrun  with  people  who  are  awaiting  an 
opportunity  to  benefit  themselves  at  somebody  else's  ex- 
pense, and  again  there  are  plenty  of  others  always  actuated 
enough  by  envy  to  wish  to  stand  in  the  way  of  a  neighbor's 
success ;  but  it  is  not  often  that  one  hears  of  any  thing  so 
unscrupulous  as  the  conduct  of  that  company  in  their 
resolve  to  injure  me  that  they  might  profit  by  my  mis- 
fortune. There  were  only  two  things  to  do.  I  must  either 
consent  to  let  those  people  ride  rough-shod  over  me  and  ruin 
the  prospects  I  had  from  my  discovery,  or  I  must  defend 
my  just  rights  in  the  courts.  There  was  nothing  else — 
nothing  at  least  that  offered  any  practical  and  definite 
protection  to  me.  My  trade-mark  was  registered,  and  cer- 
tain processes  necessary  to  the  manufacture  of  the  microbe 
killer  were  patented.  So  far  I  had  taken  the  necessary 
precautions  to  place  myself  in  security,  but  that  was  not 
enough.  A  lawsuit  was  inevitable,  and  I  soon  discovered 
the  joy  and  delight  which  lawyers  feel  when  they  are 
engaged  in  plucking  a  fat  goose.  Justice  is  a  costly  thing. 
It  is  every  man's  right,  but  it  has  to  be  purchased  neverthe- 
less. Theory  and  practice  are  very  different.  All  men  are 
equal  before  the  law,  says  the  one.  But  the  other  has  a 
very  different  story,  and  insists  that  the  almighty  dollar 
shall  intervene  to  stop  the  poor  man  even  of  his  rights. 
There  is  no  justice  except  what  is  paid  for ;  and  so  I  found, 
for  impregnable  as  my  situation  was,  my  friends  the  lawyers 
took  care  to  profit  well  by  my  resolution  to  defend  it. 

Some  months  before  my  case  came  up  for  trial,  one  of 
those  old  whiskey-soaked  lawyers  whom  one  meets  with  in 
places  everywhere,  came  to  me  in  distress.  He  was  sick,  and 
asked  my  advice.  He  followed  instructions,  bought  some 
bottles  of  microbe  killer,  and  got  cured.  He  was  delighted. 
"  The  people  will  build  you  a  monument,  Mr.  Radam,"  he 


HIS  TOR  Y  OF  MY  DISCO  VER  Y. 


said  to  me  one  day,  and  he  never  lost  an  opportunity  to 
praise  my  medicine.  He  had  good  cause,  for  he  had  received 
more  relief  from  it  than  he  had  from  all  the  stuff  that  the 
doctors  had  given  him,  and  he  was  glad  to  use  it.  But 
when  my  case  got  into  court,  I  found  him  engaged  on  the 
other  side.  He  cross-examined  me,  too,  and  some  of  his 
questions  were  :  Are  you  a  physician  ?  Are  you  a  druggist  ? 
Then,  if  not,  how  is  it  possible  for  you  to  prepare  medi- 
cine ?  I  told  him  that  I  was  neither  doctor  nor  druggist, 
and  that  he  knew  of  his  own  experience  that  if  I  had  been  I 
could  not  have  cured  him  or  anybody  else  in  the  same  con- 
dition, for  those  fellows  always  work  for  the  almighty  dollar, 
and  not  to  cure  their  patients,  if  they  can  make  more  by 
keeping  them  sick,  while  they  represent  me  as  one  of  the 
most  dangerous  and  one  of  the  worst  men  that  were  ever 
born.  I  have  often  thought  that  if  men  like  that  lawyer 
and  others  I  have  met  with  should  ever  get  to  heaven,  I 
should  have  no  wish  to  be  in  their  company. 

The  judge  wrote  the  following  finding: 

ist.  I  find  that  the  plaintiff  manufactures  and  sells  a  medicine 
of  good  curative  properties  and  large  commercial  value. 

2d.  That  this  medicine  rapidly  made  a  reputation,  which  gave 
it  large  commercial  value. 

JOHN  C.  TOWNES, 

Judge  Twenty-Sixth  Judicial  District  of  Texas. 

Appended  to  the  above  I  have  the  subjoined  certificate: 

THE  STATE  OF  TEXAS,  COUNTY  OF  TRAVIS. 

I,  John  Dowell,  Travis  County,  Texas,  do  hereby  certify  that 
the  above  and  foregoing  are  true  and  correct  extracts  taken  from 
the  findings  of  the  Judge  as  to  facts  in  case  of  Wm.  Radam  vs. 
Capital  Microbe  Destroyer  Co.,  et  at.,  in  District  Court  of  Travis 
Co.,  Texas,  the  original  of  which  is  on  file  in  said  Court. 

Given  under  my  hand  and  seal  of  office  this  zpth  day  of  July, 

A.D.,  1888. 

JOHN  DOWELL, 

Notary  Public,  Travis  Co.,  Texas. 


1 1 8  MICROBES. 


Well,  the  trial  turned  out  to  my  benefit  in  the  end.  A 
little  trouble  is  sometimes  useful.  It  serves  to  show  us  who 
our  friends  are.  It  brings  out  the  best  and  the  worst  points 
in  a  man's  character,  and  often  teaches  us  that  there  are 
better  people  in  the  world,  and  worse  ones,  too,  than  we  are 
apt  to  suppose. 

The  story  of  my  discovery  was  now  known  to  everybody. 
The  lawsuit  was  a  grand  advertisement.  All  honorable 
people  gathered  around  me.  I  found  I  had  a  host  of  friends, 
and  that  there  were  some  among  my  neighbors  who  were 
qualified  only  to  be  cared  for  by  Mephistopheles.  Of  the  eight 
or  ten  imitations  of  my  medicines  that  appeared  within  two 
years  the  majority  belonged  to  sons  of  ^sculapius,  who 
found  it  more  profitable  to  drop  their  usual  calling  and  to 
try  to  earn  a  living  by  imitating  the  work  of  another  man's 
brains.  They  went  where  my  microbe  killer  was  best 
known,  and  probably  they  picked  up  a  few  dollars  by  their 
misrepresentations,  for  there  are  always  a  number  of  people 
about  who  are  ready  to  buy  any  thing  on  the  faith  of  mis- 
representations that  are  made  to  them  and  without  investi- 
gation. Sometimes  these  men  went  so  far  as  to  buy  up  my 
jugs  from  my  own  patients,  refill  them  with  their  mixture, 
and  sell  as  genuine.  I  doubt  if  there  was  ever  any  thing  so 
much  imitated  in  so  short  a  time  as  was  Radam's  Microbe 
Killer,  and  for  the  simple  reason  that  no  similar  discovery 
has  made  so  great  a  reputation  in  the  same  time. 

At  my  headquarters  I  have  a  collection  of  all  samples  of 
jugs,  bottles,  and  circulars  of  my  imitators,  and  if  imitations 
increase  as  fast  in  the  future  as  they  did  in  the  past,  I  shall 
have  such  a  museum  as  cannot  be  equalled.  It  will  be 
quite  unique,  and  I  can  look  upon  it  with  satisfaction,  be- 
cause it  is  evidence  that  I  have  done  something  which  is 
worthy  of  imitation.  I  also  keep  on  file  all  the  medical 
papers  which  have  tried  to  cry  down  Radam's  Microbe  Killer, 
and  to  appeal  to  the  public  for  protection  against  "quack 
medicines."  Gentlemen,  send  on  your  papers  as  fast  as  you 
please,  for  there  is  plenty  of  room  in  my  museum.  It  never 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY.  .    119 

• 
hurts  me  to  be  well-advertised,  and  every  attack  upon  me 

is  an  advertisement.  There  is  a  spirit  of  fair  play  abroad 
among  most  people,  and  when  they  see  a  man  attacked 
they  are  apt  to  pause  and  evince  some  interest.  If  they 
convince  themselves  that  the  attack  is  unjust,  their  sympa- 
thy is  excited,  and  the  wrong  falls  at  once  upon  the  proper 
party.  It  is  only  when  the  attack  is  justifiable  that  it  can 
harm  the  object  of  it.  In  my  case  my  neighbors  knew  me 
too  well  for  any  thing  of  the  kind  to  hurt  me ;  and  where  I 
was  not  personally  known,  my  medicine  spoke  for  me,  and 
the  microbe  killer  gave  the  lie  to  slander. 

The  factory  at  Austin  had  been  in  operation  only  nine 
months,  when  calls  for  a  larger  supply  of  my  medicine  came 
in,  and  new  factories  became  necessary.  Several  new  com- 
panies were  formed,  and  to-day  a  little  over  two  years  have 
elapsed,  and  we  have  seventeen  factories  in  full  operation  to 
supply  the  demand  of  the  United  States,  Canada,  and  Great 
Britain.  Is  not  this  a  proof  in  itself  of  the  value  of  my  dis- 
covery ?  If  it  were  not  capable  of  effecting  what  is  prom- 
ised for  it,  how  could  it  have  made  such  a  success  and  been 
so  largely  developed  in  so  short  a  time  ? 

The  people  are  not  in  the  habit  of  supporting  any  thing 
which  they  know  to  be  worthless.  They  may  be  deceived 
for  a  time,  but  any  thing  which  advertises  itself  by  its  own 
merits  and  extends  as  rapidly  in  popular  demand  as  the 
microbe  killer  has,  must  be  worthy  of  approval  and  equal  to 
all  that  is  represented  about  it.  It  must  be  remembered 
further,  that  each  factory  as  it  started  met  with  similar 
opposition.  Each  had  to  go  through  the  same  ordeal. 
The  doctors,  and  everybody  connected  with  so-called  medi- 
cal science  set  themselves  in  opposition  to  us.  It  might  be 
supposed  that  the  druggists  would  not  oppose  any  thing  that 
they  can  sell,  but  they  do  not  want  any  thing  that  cures  all 
diseases.  They  want  as  much  profit  as  they  can  get,  and 
they  would  rather  sell  half  a  dozen  nostrums,  even  if  they 
knew  them  to  be  worthless.  It  stands  to  reason  that  they 
do  not  care  to  see  a  person  cured.  They  would  rather  keep 


120  MICROBES. 


him  on  the  string,  and  so  make  more  money  out  of  him.  It 
is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  druggist  any  more  than 
the  doctor  desires  to  get  a  customer  off  his  hands.  Then, 
again,  every  person  who  came  to  me  at  first,  or  certainly 
the  great  majority  of  them,  had  been  swindled  before  by 
quack  doctors,  or  had  paid  away  a  good  deal  of  money  in 
medical  fees,  and  they  were  cautious.  They  investigated 
before  they  bought  the  microbe  killer,  and  as  soon  as  they 
found  that  it  was  as  represented,  they  were  equally  zealous 
in  proclaiming  its  merits. 

My  success  has  not  been  due  to  my  own  advertising. 
The  microbe  killer  was  bound  to  go  because  of  its  intrinsic 
value.  It  could  not  fail  as  soon  as  people  began  to  find  out 
what  it  is.  All  who  are  now  in  the  business  have  used  it 
themselves,  either  personally  or  for  members  of  their  family 
or  both,  and  they  have  seen  its  advantages  among  their 
friends.  From  this  experience  they  know  that  it  must 
succeed.  What  they  tell  the  people  who  apply  to  them  is 
from  their  own  knowledge,  not  merely  from  instructions, 
and  they  know  that  it  must  certainly  supersede  other  medi- 
cines. Our  agents  who  are  evergwhere,  are  people  of  standing 
and  character,  they  include  ladies  of  all  ages  and  gentle- 
men of  all  professions,  and  they  are  selling  the  microbe 
killer  and  curing  people  who  have  been  given  up  by  the 
doctors,  and  whom  physicians  have  told  that  nobody  can 
cure.  I  could  cite  thousands  of  cases  that  have  been  pro- 
nounced as  beyond  the  reach  of  help  by  physicians  who 
have  been  cured  by  our  agents  with  the  microbe  killer. 

Many  experiences  have  occurred  to  me  within  the  last 
two  years,  some  of  which  I  may  mention.  In  1887,  yellow- 
fever  prevailed  at  Key  West,  Florida,  when  it  produced 
great  havoc  among  the  scanty  population.  I  was  anxious 
to  treat  it,  feeling  confident  that  I  could  control  it.  Ac- 
cordingly I  wrote  to  the  Inspector  of  Customs  there  and 
expressed  to  him  two  gallons  of  my  medicine,  requesting  to 
administer  it  according  to  directions  without  fear,  as  I  was 
confident  it  would  destroy  the  fever  germs.  I  sent  him 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY.  121 

particulars  of  my  discovery  with  testimony  as  to  its  efficacy 
and  he  told  me  he  had  never  heard  of  it  before.  This  was 
probable,  for  at  that  time  it  was  quite  new  and  I  had  taken 
no  special  means  to  make  it  known.  But  all  to  no  purpose. 
He  would  not  use  it  because,  as  he  said,  he  did  not  know 
how  it  was  made.  This  was  acting  up  to  the  ethics  of  the 
medical  profession,  whose  members  profess  to  prescribe 
nothing  which  they  do  not  understand  the  nature  of  and  the 
composition  or  mode  of  manufacture.  But  when  we  look  at 
the  way  in  which  that  rule  operated  in  this  instance,  we 
cannot  fail  to  recognize  how  it  operates  to  the  detriment  of 
the  public.  Here  were  people  dying  of  an  extremely  dan- 
gerous disease.  More  than  a  fifth  of  those  who  were 
attacked  perished.  Medical  science  failed.  I  came  in  with 
the  microbe  killer  confident  that  I  could  cure,  and  the 
doctors  would  not  give  me  the  chance  to  try.  They  knew 
that  my  medicine  could  do  no  harm,  and  they  would  not 
find  out  for  themselves  whether  it  would  do  good.  They 
would  rather  see  their  patients  carried  away  to  the  cemetery 
than  break  through  a  rule  which  says  they  must  only  use 
certain  drugs  and  certain  formulae. 

The  deaths  at  that  time  were  twenty-one  per  cent.,  and  the 
doctors  called  that  a  favorable  result  and  congratulated 
themselves  on  the  success  of  their  treatment,  which  the 
physician  in  charge  explained  to  me.  He  said  that  he  gave 
his  patients  as  much  turpentine  as  they  could  bear  without 
being  poisoned.  Turpentine  is  abundant  in  Florida. 
Then  to  reduce  the  fever  he  applied  ice  to  the  patient's 
head,  and  his  theory  was  that  as  the  turpentine  permeates 
the  tissues  it  counteracts  the  poison. 

Now,  if  that  man  still  lives  he  should,  in  my  opinion,  be 
indicted  for  manslaughter  for  the  methods  that  he  acknowl- 
edges having  used.  The  yellow-fever  would  not  have 
prevailed  in  Florida  as  it  did  if  the  same  kind  of  stupidity 
had  not  stood  in  the  way  of  preventing  it,  for  Dr.  Wolfred 
Nelson,  a  Canadian  physician,  who  has  large  experience  at 
Panama,  saw  evidences  of  it  at  Jacksonville  months  before 


122  MICROBES. 


and  warned  the  people,  but  again  medical  ethics  stood  in  the 
way,  and  as  a  result  a  large  part  of  the  population  perished. 
Yellow-fever  is  at  first  infectious,  but  it  becomes  contagious 
as  it  advances  in  severity,  and  every  hour  is  of  consequence. 
There  is  no  time  to  experiment  with  remedies  that  have 
been  known  to  fail, — and  these  are  legion.  A  physician  who 
has  seen  thousands  of  cases  of  it  once  said  :  "  Four  centu- 
ries have  taught  the  profession  nothing,  or  next  to  it.  All 
that  has  been  known  of  yellow-fever  is  that  people  got  it 
and  died.  May  God  forgive  the  old  school  of  medicine  for 
its  ignorance  and  charlatanism."  That,  I  say,  is  the  remark 
of  a  physician  eminent  in  his  profession  and  who  knows 
whereof  he  speaks  when  he  thus  alludes  to  yellow-fever. 
But  there  is  more  in  this.  Yellow-fever  is  acknowledged  by 
the  doctors  to  be  a  microbe  disease.  The  micro-organisms  are 
in  the  blood,  and  they  have  the  peculiarity  of  seizing  upon 
the  blood  corpuscles  and  destroying  them.  The  only 
form  of  treatment  that  can  be  of  any  use  is  one  in  which 
some  agency  is  introduced  into  the  blood  that  renders  it 
unavailable  as  a  culture  fluid  for  the  microbes,  so  that  they 
cannot  grow  and  be  reproduced.  Turpentine  does  not  do 
this,  and  it  only  kills  the  microbes  by  first  killing  the 
patient.  But  that  is  the  principle  upon  which  my  medicine 
operates.  It  goes  through  the  system.  It  enters  the  blood, 
and  while  enriching  that  important  fluid  it  gets  it  into  a 
condition  where  microbes  cannot  exist.  They  perish  as 
soon  as  they  come  in  contact  with  it. 

From  what  I  have  said  in  other  places  about  the  anti- 
septic properties  of  alcohol  and  whiskey,  it  maybe  supposed 
that  these  would  act  against  the  germs  of  yellow-fever,  but 
they  do  not.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  persons  are  liable  to  it 
in  those  parts  of  the  tropics  where  it  prevails.  Moderate 
drinkers  sometimes  surfer  more  than  total  abstainers,  and 
hard  drinkers  almost  invariably  succumb.  Physicians  know 
this,  they  know  that  this  fever  is  a  blood  disease,  yet  they 
will  not  go  aside  from  their  old  routine.  They  have  hunted 
about  for  post-mortem  appearances  to  find  some  pathologi- 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY.  123 

cal  conditions,  but  they  find  none.  There  are  none  to  find. 
The  disease  is  in  the  blood  and  nowhere  else,  and  if  they  will 
examine  the  blood  with  a  microscope  they  will  see  the 
microbes  and  the  ruined  blood  corpuscles.  The  brain  is 
affected  in  this  fever,  and  why  ?  Simply  because  the  oxygen 
supplied  in  health  by  the  blood  can  no  longer  be  carried 
there ;  and  the  broken  up  corpuscles  are  eliminated  and 
shown  in  the  form  of  albumen  in  the  kidneys.  It  is  well 
known  that  yellow-fever  may  be  communicated  by  mosqui- 
toes. One  only  of  these  insects  biting  a  healthy  person 
after  having  drawn  blood  from  a  fever-stricken  patient,  can 
convey  the  disease ;  and  it  does  so  by  carrying  the  microbe 
from  one  to  the  other. 

I  dwell  upon  this  subject  of  yellow-fever  because  it  is  a 
most  marked  illustration  of  the  value  of  my  medicine,  and 
to  show  that,  although  the  doctors,  or  some  of  them  at  least, 
know  these  things,  they  would  rather  see  a  patient  die  under 
their  old-fashioned  treatment  than  live  under  mine.  But 
the  people  are  becoming  enlightened.  Their  eyes  must  be 
opened  to  these  things.  They  must  be  made  to  see  for 
themselves  how  they  have  been  preyed  upon,  and  how  the 
medical  profession  impedes  the  introduction  of  medicines 
that  will  cure,  rather  than  move  from  their  own  beaten  track. 
They  must  be  allowed  to  recognize  the  perversity  of  the 
men  at  Key  West,  who,  with  persons  dying  in  scores  around 
them,  refused  to  allow  my  medicine  to  be  used,  although  its 
merits  were  put  before  them,  and  preferred  to  drench  their 
victims  with  turpentine.  If  such  men  had  their  deserts, 
they  would  themselves  be  filled  with  turpentine,  and  then, 
following  their  own  methods,  be  stowed  away  in  an  ice-house 
to  cool  off. 

Yet  such  treatment  is  still  being  followed,  as  in  accord 
with  medical  science.  The  reader  will  have  noted  in  this 
connection  what  was  said  in  previous  pages  about  the  use  of 
paint  as  a  preservative  ;  and  how  turpentine  assists  to  de- 
stroy fungi  and  micro-organisms  on  houses,  fences,  and  on 
wood  generally.  Lumber  of  fat  pine  lasts  longer  in  the 


124  MICROBES. 


ground  than  sapwood,  on  account  of  the  resin  and  turpen- 
tine, on  the  same  principle.  Thus,  what  Nature  and  the 
painter  use  to  preserve  dead  matter,  the  physician  uses  to 
preserve  living  matter.  Ice  does  not  kill  microbes,  it  only 
checks  fermentation.  Experiments  have  shown  that  they 
can  sustain  a  degree  of  cold  many  degrees  below  zero  of 
Fahrenheit,  and  still  be  as  lively,  as  prolific,  and  as  danger- 
ous as  before.  Unfortunately,  patients  or  their  friends  have 
found  these  things  out  for  themselves.  The  physicians  at 
Key  West  acknowledge  a  mortality  among  their  patients  of 
more  than  twenty  per  cent.  I  wonder  whether  the  mortality 
would  have  been  much  greater  if  there  had  been  no  doctors 
in  the  neighborhood  ;  but  I  have  no  doubt  it  would  have 
been  very  much  less  if  some  intelligent  system  of  treatment 
in  accordance  with  the  laws  and  teaching  of  Nature  had 
been  adopted.  Friends  of  the  victims  have  at  any  rate  dis- 
covered that  the  medical  system  was  a  failure,  and  perhaps 
if  ever  a  similar  visitation  should  fall  upon  them,  they  will 
be  ready  to  cut  adrift  from  medical  science  and  get  the 
benefit  of  a  consistent  medicine. 

It  has  always  been  a  source  of  deep  regret  to  me  that 
through  the  barriers,  erected  by  the  medical  profession  in 
the  same  way  in  Germany,  I  was  unable  to  reach  the  late 
Emperor  Frederick.  I  wrote  seven  letters  to  Berlin,  and 
received  not  a  single  answer — not  even  an  acknowledgment. 
Jealousy  reigned  among  the  physicians  in  attendance. 
Each  one  wanted  the  honor  of  curing,  or  at  least  of  ad- 
vising, and  even  if  they  had  known  of  a  remedy  which  was 
outside  of  science,  it  is  doubtful  whether  they  would  have 
used  it.  I  gave  them  ample  testimony  as  to  the  value  of 
my  medicine,  and  I  asked  them  at  least  to  investigate  for 
themselves  and  ascertain  the  truth  of  my  statements,  but 
they  would  not.  Ignorance  and  jealousy  stood  in  the  way. 
Just  as  the  physicians  at  Key  West  would  rather  see  their 
patients  die  of  yellow-fever  than  have  them  cured  by  some 
one  outside  the  pale  of  theii  own  profession,  so  those  doc- 
tors at  Berlin  were  prepared  rather  to  sacrifice  the  life  of  the 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY.  125 

Emperor  of  Germany  than  test  the  value  of  a  treatment  to 
which  the  only  objection  was,  that  it  is  the  discovery  of  one 
who  is  not  a  physician.  Even  my  letters  were  suppressed. 
The  patient  never  knew  of  their  existence.  He  was  kept  in 
entire  ignorance  of  the  relief  that  I  offered  him,  and  was 
allowed  to  die  a  victim  to  professional  prejudices  and  personal 
animosities. 

How  many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  are  in  like 
manner  kept  in  ignorance  to-day  through  the  perversity  that 
killed  the  Emperor !  The  profession  ignored  my  medicine. 
They  did  not  notice  it.  I  watched  the  medical  papers  care- 
fully from  day  to  day  and  from  week  to  week,  and  no  notice 
was  taken  of  it.  I  read  all  bulletins  as  they  came  out,  and 
it  was  unheeded.  The  course  pursued  by  the  physicians  at- 
tending on  the  Emperor  was  one  that  favored  the  production 
of  microbes.  They  were  nursed,  and  their  culture  was  in- 
creased. At  first  they  were  in  one  locality  only,  but  they 
multiplied  to  such  an  extent  that  soon  they  occupied  the 
whole  body.  They  filled  the  tissues.  They  circulated  in 
the  blood,  producing  a  general  condition  of  fermentation,  so 
that  the  body  underwent  a  process  of  decay  and  decomposi- 
tion during  life.  The  whole  system  must  have  been  filled 
with  living  matter.  Every  organ,  every  muscle  must  have 
been  teeming  with  micro-organisms.  Yet  that  patient  was 
in  care  of  the  most  eminent  physicians  even  in  Europe,  and 
they,  with  all  the  resources  which  medical  science  had  put 
into  their  hands,  could  not  cure  him.  What  then  might  we 
expect  from  ordinary  physicians  ?  It  was  admitted  through- 
out the  profession  that  the  disease  of  which  the  Emperor 
died  was  one  caused  by  the  presence  of  microbes,  and  still 
they  followed  the  old-fashioned  practice  which  was  in  vogue 
before  disease  germs  were  understood,  and  they  refused 
medicine  which  is  especially  adapted  to  act  upon  micro- 
organisms. All  this  shows  that  there  is  something  more 
than  ignorance  to  be  overcome,  for  it  is  prejudice  and 
superstition  and  a  blind  adherence  to  fatal  customs  that 
stand  in  the  way  of  the  proper  valuation  of  new  discoveries. 


126  MICROBES. 


I  hope,  and  I  do  not  entertain  any  doubt,  that  the  time  is  not 
far  distant  when  my  discovery  will  be  recognized,  so  that 
the  microbe  killer  shall  put  a  stop  to  such  slaughters,  and 
men  who  are  guilty  of  them  shall  have  to  follow  some 
other  occupations ;  for  I  am  quite  convinced  that  cases  like 
those  of  the  Emperor  of  Germany  and  of  General  Grant 
would  readily  yield  to  the  microbe  killer  if  it  were  properly 
used. 

Cases,  however,  have  come  under  my  own  immediate  ob- 
servation, which  are  more  noteworthy  than  those.  While  I 
was  in  San  Francisco  arranging  to  start  Factory  No.  10,  I 
met  an  old  gentleman,  seventy-one  years  of  age,  who  had 
lost  one  arm.  He  came  to  my  office  and  explained  that  as 
a  result  of  accident  a  cancer  had  formed  on  the  palm  of  his 
hand.  He  had  advice  for  it,  and  was  under  doctors'  care 
for  some  years,  but  it  did  not  get  better.  Instead,  it  per- 
sistently grew  worse,  until  it  endangered  his  life.  Every 
known  remedy  at  that  time  was  tried,  but  to  no  purpose, 
and  finally  the  physicians  amputated  the  arm  below  the 
elbow.  But  this  did  not  stay  the  disease,  for  the  man's 
blood  was  full  of  cancer  microbes,  and  no  medicine  had 
been  used  to  destroy  them.  Consequently  the  disease  broke 
out  anew,  as  of  course  it  was  bound  to  do.  Sores  and  ulcers 
formed  around  the  stump,  and  again  he  applied  to  his  phy- 
sician. Fifteen  had  given  their  advice,  but  they  could  do 
nothing  except  to  advise  that  the  arm  should  be  amputated 
again  higher  up.  He  was  considering  this  suggestion  when 
I  saw  him.  His  condition  was  terrible.  Red  spots  were 
over  his  face.  His  left  arm  was  covered  with  scrofulous 
sores,  and  cancer  was  developing  under  the  arm.  He  asked 
my  opinion,  and  I  gave  it  to  him  honestly.  I  told  him 
plainly  that  I  could  not  cure  him,  as  his  age  was  against 
him.  I  said  :  "  You  see  we  must  purify  the  blood  entirely 
before  all  cancer  disappears.  There  is  no  use  in  using  the 
knife."  These  were  the  words  I  used,  because  my  business 
demands  that  I  tell  just  what  I  think.  I  cannot  afford  to 
make  promises  which  I  am  not  able  to  keep.  I  explained 


CANCER. 


DROP  OF  FERMENT  FROM  A.  CANCER  GROWTH. 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY. 


that  it  was  true  that  I  had  cured  many  cases  of  cancer,  but 
that  in  his  case  the  disease  had  gone  too  far,  and  age  was 
another  obstacle.  It  was  necessary  to  remove  all  living  mi- 
crobes and  micro-organisms  before  a  cure  could  be  effected, 
and  even  under  more  favorable  circumstances  I  could  not 
hope  to  do  it  in  less  than  nine  months,  when  the  system 
was  so  filled  with  them  as  was  his.  In  fact  I  told  him  I  did 
not  think  that  he  would  see  any  improvement  in  less  time 
than  that.  But  the  old  gentleman  had  confidence  in  me, 
and  faith  in  my  medicine,  and  he  determined  to  give  it  a 
trial. 

I  gave  him  the  strong  No.  2,  with  instructions  to  take  as 
much  of  it  as  he  found  the  system  would  stand,  which  was 
from  four  to  six  wine-glassfuls  daily,  and  I  also  supplied  him 
with  No.  3,  with  which  to  treat  locally  the  stump  and  other 
arm.  I  advised  him  to  soak  some  cotton  wool  with  the 
microbe  killer,  and  to  keep  it  on  the  most  painful  places. 
He  followed  my  instructions  rigidly,  and  I  saw  no  more  of 
him  for  three  weeks.  Throughout  the  whole  course  of  his 
disease  he  had  suffered  agonizing  pain,  from  which  he  could 
obtain  no  relief  except  in  constant  dosing  with  morphia. 
His  system  was  suffering  from  this,  for  it  did  not  help  the 
cancer,  and  he  was  fearful  that  it  might  become,  if  it  had 
not  already  done  so,  a  habit  that  he  would  not  get  rid  of. 
When  he  called  upon  me  again,  however,  he  told  me  that 
the  pains  had  so  much  diminished  that  the  morphia  was  no 
longer  necessary,  and  that  he  had  without  an  effort  stopped 
the  use  of  it  entirely.  He  had  sound,  refreshing  sleep,  and 
his  appetite  was  greatly  improved.  He  continued  to  get 
better.  The  pains  did  not  return,  the  ulcers  put  on  a 
healthy  appearance  and  began  to  heal,  and  at  the  end  of  six 
months  he  called  upon  me  and  said  that  he  was  entirely  cured, 
with  the  exception  of  one  small  spot.  He  had  increased 
thirty-six  pounds  in  weight  during  the  time  he  had  been 
taking  the  microbe  killer,  of  which  he  had  had  in  all  seven- 
teen gallons.  This  was  a  very  free  use  of  the  medicine,  but 
I  doubt  if  he  would  have  derived  the  same  benefit  if  he  had 


128  MICROBES. 


taken  less,  for  his  case  was  a  very  bad  one,  and  the  disease  had 
advanced  to  a  stage  where,  had  it  not  been  checked,  it  must 
soon  have  terminated  fatally.  The  entire  system  must  have 
been  in  a  state  of  fermentation,  and  from  experience  I  know 
that  the  body  must  be,  as  it  were,  soaked  with  the  medicine 
before  the  full  benefit  can  be  derived  from  it.  The  cessation 
of  pain,  however,  which  occurred  so  soon,  showed  that  the 
microbes  were  yielding  to  the  treatment  and  probably  per- 
ishing, but  then  the  blood  remained  to  be  purified,  and  the 
general  system  had  to  be  built  up. 

This  case  is  in  many  respects  remarkable.  It  shows  that 
it  was  not  necessary  to  remove  a  limb,  and  that,  notwith- 
standing the  age  of  the  patient  and  the  progress  of  the  can- 
cer, it  is  quite  possible  by  a  rational  treatment  to  get  rid  of 
this  terrible  complaint.  Physicians  well  know  how  very 
seldom  an  operation  is  successful  in  cancer,  and  still  they 
go  on  having  recourse  to  the  knife,  as  though  feeling  that 
they  must  do  something,  and  not  having  the  moral  courage 
to  admit  that  they  have  not  the  ability  to  cure.  When  an 
operation  is  performed  in  a  case  of  cancer,  the  entire  dis- 
eased portion  must  be  removed,  but  more  than  that,  the 
surgeon  must  be  sure  that  he  has  not  left  behind  one  single 
germ  of  disease,  for- as  certain  as  he  has  done  that,  the 
cancer  will  reappear  in  a  very  short  time.  Now  if  the  can- 
cer microbes  were  confined  to  the  ulcer,  it  might  be  possible 
by  removing  enough  of  the  healthy  flesh  to  get  them  away, 
and  this  is  the  theory  that  the  physician  works  upon. 
But  it  is  not  so.  The  germs  get  into  the  blood  in  a  very 
short  time,  and  thus  circulate  through  the  system.  It  must, 
therefore,  be  evident  to  everybody  that  an  operation  at  this 
stage  of  the  disease  is  absolutely  useless.  It  is  worse  than 
that,  because  it  invariably  tends  to  the  formation  of  new 
ulcers  not  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  old  sores,  but  possibly 
in  various  parts  of  the  body,  and  thus  the  second  condition 
of  the  patient  Is  worse  than  the  first. 

I  was  satisfied,  when  I  saw  the  wonderful  effects  of  the 
microbe  killer  in  this  old  gentleman,  that  I  should  have  had 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY.  12Q 

no  difficulty  in  curing  the  Emperor  Frederick  of  Germany, 
for  his  case  was  not  nearly  as  severe.  Nature  has  told  me 
repeatedly,  too,  that  if  a  tree  be  blighted  or  the  sap  be  in  any 
way  diseased,  it  cannot  be  cured  by  pruning  the  branches, 
a  device  which  would  only  have  the  effect  of  intensifying 
the  disease  in  other  portions  of  the  tree.  The  sap  must  be 
freed  from  bacteria,  and  purified  ;  and  then,  and  then  only, 
does  the  tree  itself  become  healthy  again  and  show  its  green 
leaves  and  put  on  a  healthy  appearance.  The  bulletins 
issued  by  the  doctors  about  the  Emperor  of  Germany  all 
seemed  to  strengthen  my  conviction  that  medical  science  is 
a  fraud  of  the  grossest  kind  ;  and  it  is  the  public  who  are 
the  sufferers  if  this  thing  be  allowed  to  go  on.  It  is  now 
under  the  protection  of  the  law,  on  the  principle  that  physi- 
cians hold  human  life  in  their  hands,  and  that  therefore  the 
people  should  be  guarded  against  placing  themselves  un- 
knowingly at  the  mercy  of  unqualified  people.  As  a  straw 
showing  which  way  the  wind  blows,  however,  I  may  men- 
tion that,  even  as  I  write  this,  a  report  has  come  from  Massa- 
chusetts to  the  effect  that  an  association  of  "  irregulars  "  has 
been  formed  in  that  State  entitled  the  Massachusetts  Con- 
stitutional Liberty  League.  The  object  of  this  body  is  to 
resist  restrictive  legislation  or  any  legislation  suggested  and 
supported  by  physicians  as  a  body.  In  one  of  the  resolu- 
tions passed  at  the  meeting  when  the  society  was  organized, 
the  patrons  of  so-called  irregular  practice  were  charged  that 
they  owe  it  to  those  who  have  served  and  saved  them  after 
the  doctors  had  utterly  failed  to  cure  or  even  benefit  them, 
to  sustain  them  in  the  struggle  for  constitutional  liberty. 
This  at  least  indicates  that  the  movement  has  begun,  which, 
if  carried  on,  will  put  a  stop  to  the  work  of  a  privileged 
class  and  allow  the  full  development  of  such  discoveries  as 
mine. 

The  instruments  of  the  surgeon  are  the  means  of  destroy- 
ing more  lives  in  our  hospitals  and  colleges  than  are  the 
weapons  of  all  our  desperadoes  and  law-breakers.     An  assas- 
sin makes  quick  work   too   with   his  victim.     But  in  the 
9 


130  MICROBES. 


surgical  ward  of  a  hospital  the  patient  is  killed  by  a  slow 
process,  and  if  he  protests  against  the  suffering  to  which  he 
is  subjected,  he  is  quieted  with  morphia  or  chloroform.  I 
have  had  many  hundreds  of  patients  come  to  my  office  and 
tell  me  how  this  or  that  specialist  removed  a  limb  or  a  breast 
for  cancer,  and  then  sent  the  patient  away  with  an  empty 
pocket  to  realize  that  the  disease  was  not  cured,  and  to  find 
only  too  soon  that  it  was  reappearing  elsewhere  with  more 
virulence  than  before.  This  must  be  where  the  microbes 
are  in  the  blood,  bringing  it  to  a  state  of  fermentation,  evi- 
dence of  which  is  readily  perceptible  in  the  sallow  or  pale- 
yellow  color  of  the  skin,  especially  where  the  capillary 
blood-vessels  are  usually  most  apparent. 

The  practice  of  surgery  is  growing  worse,  and  the  down- 
ward process  has  been  advanced  chiefly  here  by  the  mis- 
taken notion  that  good  surgery  means  handiness  with  the 
knife.  We  have  plenty  of  men  who  are  quite  reckless  in 
cutting  a  person  to  pieces,  and  they  do  it,  if  not  skilfully, 
yet  with  a  good  deal  of  sang  froid.  But  he  is  a  better  sur- 
geon who  saves  a  limb  than  he  who  amputates  it,  and  when 
that  fact  comes  to  be  better  acted  up  to  the  people  will  be 
better  served.  The  use  of  instruments  is  abused,  but  there 
seems  to  be  a  mania  among  medical  men  for  using  them, 
and  if  they  cannot  operate  on  the  living  man  they  lose  not 
an  hour  in  cutting  up  a  dead  one,  hardly  waiting  in  their 
anxiety  to  know  that  he  is  dead.  It  is  more  than  likely 
that,  if  the  old  gentleman  in  San  Francisco  referred  to 
above,  had  come  to  me  before  he  had  had  his  hand  removed 
he  would  never  have  had  it  amputated.  It  would  have  been 
just  as  easy  to  save  that  as  it  was  to  save  the  arm  from  the 
second  operation.  When  weeds  first  appear  in  a  garden  it 
is  easy  to  get  rid  of  them,  but  if  once  they  are  allowed  to 
shed  their  seeds  it  is  more  difficult ;  and  if  they  are  allowed 
to  go  to  seed  several  times,  it  may  require  years  of  constant 
work  before  they  can  be  exterminated  and  the  land  made 
clean.  This  is  a  natural  law,  and  it  applies  alike  to  plants 
and  animals,  including  mankind. 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY.  131 

As  these  sheets  were  passing  through  the  press  I  received 
the  following  communication  : 

228  STARK  ST.,  PORTLAND,  OREGON, 
February,  1890. 

WM.  RADAM  : 

Dear  Sir  :  Since  writing  a  testimonial  in  behalf  of  your  wonder- 
ful medicine,  "  The  Microbe  Killer,"  I  have  been  thinking  there 
would  be  nothing  amiss  in  placing  before  you  the  particulars  as 
to  how  I  used  it.  My  experience  with  compound  oxygen  gave  me 
a  full  understanding  of  the  benefit  and  relief  to  be  had  from  in- 
halation, and  being  supplied  with  the  inhaling  outfit  I  soon  thought 
to  try  your  valuable  remedy  in  the  same  way,  and  I  now  place  my 
late  experience  before  you,  hoping  that  you  will  investigate  the 
matter  and  thus  further  and  faster  give  relief  to  many  suffering  as 
I  have  been.  If  opportunity  affords  please  examine  Drs,  Starkey 
and  Palen's  inhaling  outfit.  That  is  what  I  am  using.  I  fill  to 
the  line  with  pure  water  and  place  the  bottle  in  a  tin  cup  over 
half  full  of  cold  water,  never  failing  to  place  a  bit  of  tin  or  some 
little  thing  on  the  bottom  of  the  cup  to  prevent  breaking.  Then 
put  the  cup  on  a  stove  and  heat  just  a  little  hotter  than  you  can 
bear  a  finger  in.  This  is  not  so  particular  unless  the  patient  is 
very  weak,  then  so  much  heat  will  produce  a  faint  feeling.  The 
heat  and  length  of  time  for  inhaling  must  be  governed  by  the 
patient's  feelings.  Never  put  the  Microbe  Killer  into  the  inhaler 
until  heated  and  just  ready  to  use.  The  little  measure  with  the 
above-named  outfit  is  what  I  use  once  full  at  every  inhalation, 
and  I  find  it  quite  enough,  which  is  about  a  teaspoonful.  The 
next  thing  is  to  be  careful  and  not  rush  this  heating  process. 
Experience  taught  me  that  the  work  can  be  carried  on  too  rapidly. 
The  system  must  be  built  up  and  regulated  in  proportion.  Many 
times  I  have  left  off  inhaling  for  several  days,  but  now  I  have  no 
fears,  and  twice  in  twenty-four  hours  and  sometimes  oftener  is  my 
usual  way  of  doing.  Then  as  I  stated  in  my  former  letter,  a  soft 
pad  saturated  with  Microbe  Killer  should  be  placed  on  any  part 
where  there  is  pain,  with  sufficient  dry  linen  over.  Then  place  a 
hot  brick,  or  iron,  against  the  pad  and  allow  the  heat  to  be  all 
that  can  be  borne,  repeating  and  repeating  if  necessary.  But 
my  experience  has  been  that  one  heating  has  never  failed  to  relieve. 
I  must  say  that  in  all  these  years  of  suffering  I  have  never  tried 


132  MICROBES. 


any  thing  that  gave  such  astonishing  relief  in  every  particular  as 
your  Microbe  Killer.  Should  these  lines  strike  you  forcibly  and 
an  investigation  follow,  I  shall  ever  be  ready  to  give  my  experi- 
ence or  answer  questions  at  any  time. 

With  every  confidence  in  your  success,  and  with  thanks  to  God 
and  to  you  for  your  untiring  efforts,  I  am 

Respectfully, 

Mrs.  P.  F.  CASTLEMAN. 

This  letter  is  given  without  alteration  or  amendment.  It 
is  valuable  not  only  as  a  testimony  to  the  effectiveness  of  the 
Microbe  Killer  but  as  indicating  another  way  in  which  it  may 
be  employed  with  direct  advantage,  especially  in  low  cases 
where  the  patient  is  unable  to  drink  it,  as  in  affections  of 
the  throat  and  air  passages.  We  meet  with  patients  some- 
times where  the  stomach  is  in  an  extreme  condition  of  debil- 
ity, or  possibly  the  lining  membrane  of  the  organ  may  be 
ulcerated,  and  in  all  these  inhalation  is  easier,  and  if  perse- 
vered in  fully  as  effectual.  Any  form  of  inhaler  where  a 
gentle  heat  can  be  applied  will  do  for  the  purpose,  or  one 
may  be  easily  improvised.  All  that  is  needed  is  a  wide- 
mouthed  bottle  with  two  holes  in  the  cork.  Through  one 
of  these  pass  a  straight  glass  tube  open  at  the  top  and  reach- 
ing down  to  within  an  inch  of  the  bottom  of  the  bottle. 
Through  the  other  insert  another  glass  tube  bent  at  an  obtuse 
angle  and  extending  down  only  just  below  the  cork.  Fill 
this  bottle  two-thirds  full  of  water  as  Mrs.  Castleman  directs 
and  stand  it  in  a  tin  cup  half  filled  with  water  at  a  tempera- 
ture of  about  120°.  Air  passes  down  the  straight  pipe  through 
the  water  to  which  the  Microbe  Killer  has  now  been  added, 
and  the  vapor  is  inhaled  through  the  bent  tube. 

Unfortunately,  most  of  the  patients  who  come  to  us  now 
are  suffering  from  chronic  complaints,  that  is,  diseases  of 
long  standing.  The  system  in  these  is  a  mass  of  fermenta- 
tion. Some  are  rotten  throughout,  and  they  have  been 
brought  into  that  condition  under  the  care  of  the  faithful 
family  doctor,  over  a  period  possibly  of  years.  When  they 
come  to  us  they  want  to  be  cured  "  right  away."  They 


v 


BRIGHT'S  DISEASE  OF  KIDNEY.     (PARIS.) 


MICROBES   FROM  THE   KIDNEY. 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY.  133 

have  had  any  amount  of  patience  while  their  physician  was 
bungling  and  experimenting,  but  the  instant  they  think  they 
see  a  chance  of  getting  well  they  want  to  be  there  without 
any  further  delay.  Now  this  cannot  be  done.  When  a  dis- 
ease has  been  years  in  the  system  it  has  become  almost  a 
part  of  it.  Indeed,  there  are  instances  where  an  old  com- 
plaint having  been  apparently  removed,  another,  in  a  differ- 
ent form,  makes  its  appearance,  showing  that  an  abnormal 
condition  has  become  so  much  a  part  of  the  being  as  to  be 
rendered  almost  normal.  In  a  chronic  disease  the  entire 
body  is  more  or  less  involved.  But  when  the  trouble  has 
been  of  short  duration  only  it  may  be  but  local ;  or  if  not, 
it  certainly  has  not  acquired  the  same  hold  upon  the  consti- 
tution. It  is  therefore  very  clear  why  a  chronic  disease 
requires  greater  patience  and  more  steady  perseverance  if 
we  would  remove  it  entirely. 

The  example  of  the  weeds  in  the  garden  illustrates  this 
again.  Where  they  are  few  and  of  but  short  duration  they 
yield  readily  to  our  efforts  for  their  removal,  but  when  they 
have  seeded  through  several  seasons  they  resemble  a  chronic 
disease  in  man,  and  are  more  difficult  to  deal  with  and 
require  a  longer  time.  Then  note  the  effect  of  weeds,  and 
our  illustration  goes  further.  Observe  a  field  of  corn  where 
the  land  is  clean  and  in  good  order,  and  compare  it  with 
the  adjoining  field,  where,  although  the  land  may  be  of  the 
same  nature,  it  is  covered  with  weeds.  In  the  one  the  corn 
is  strong  and  vigorous,  the  stalks  and  leaves  are  clean,  and 
the  plants  show  every  indication  of  thriving.  In  the  other 
the  stalks  are  small  and  slender,  the  leaves  are  sickly  and 
pale  in  color,  and  in  every  probability  there  is  evidence  of 
fungus  having  attacked  it.  This,  if  left  to  itself,  feeds  upon 
the  unthrifty  plants,  and  soon  they  die  for  want  of  air  and 
sustenance,  crowded  out  of  existence  by  a  host  of  enemies 
that  followed  quickly  on  the  impoverished  condition  caused 
by  the  weeds  surrounding  them.  So  in  the  case  of  a  person 
suffering  from  chronic  disease.  He  has  something  that,  like 
the  weeds,  impoverishes  the  soil,  feeds  on  his  life  blood, 


1 34  MICROBES. 


and  gradually  drags  him  down  to  death.  Then  where  a 
neglected  cornfield  is  cleaned  and  the  weeds  removed  you 
may  have  observed  how  it  looks  shocked  ;  it  has  an  appear- 
ance as  though  it  were  going  to  die,  and  continues  so  until 
it  gets  a  start.  Then,  there  being  nothing  around  it  to  draw 
nourishment  away  from  the  soil  or  to  deprive  it  of  the 
vivifying  effects  of  the  air,  it  grows  thicker  and  stronger, 
blossoms,  bears  fruit,  perfects  its  seed,  and,  having  fulfilled 
its  mission,  it  dies  of  old  age. 

It  is  necessary  I  should  mention  these  things  in  order  to 
carry  conviction  to  the  mind  of  the  great  public  concerning 
the  methods  of  Nature  in  working  out  her  laws.  I  write  to 
instruct,  but  not  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  acquired  their 
wisdom  in  medical  schools  and  colleges.  Their  bread  and 
butter  is  obtained  as  the  fruits  of  what  they  learned  at  those 
places,  and  not  from  what  it  is  my  province  to  prove.  De- 
prive them  of  their  teachings  and  you  deprive  them  of  their 
present  means  of  living,  and  their  plan  and  mine  are  not 
the  same.  I  want  to  enlighten  the  public,  to  teach  them 
that  things  which  they  have  hitherto  felt  to  be  complicated 
and  difficult  to  understand  are  simple  and  quite  within  the 
comprehension  of  all.  But  the  college  practitioner  would 
hide  these  things  from  the  people  and  keep  them  in  igno- 
rance. He  conceals  Nature.  He  makes  her  works  appear 
mysterious.  He  describes  them  in  terms  that  the  people 
do  not  understand.  He  keeps  his  patient  in  the  dark  that 
he  may  not  know  the  devices  that  are  used  to  take  money 
from  his  pockets. 

When  I  read  of  the  wonderful  progress  of  medical  science, 
of  the  triumphs  of  medicine  and  surgery,  and  so  on,  and 
then  think  of  the  number  of  cases  I  have  cured  which  medi- 
cal science  had  abandoned,  and  of  the  unfortunate  people 
who  have  come  to  me  with  limbs  sacrificed  to  professional 
ignorance,  I  am  shocked  at  the  deceptions  that  are  practised. 

When  I  see  people  who  have  been  ruined  by  doctors' 
bills,  left  sometimes  with  large  families  of  children  depend- 
ant on  them  and  almost  without  bread  to  eat ;  when  mothers 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY.  135 

and  fathers  have  come  to  me,  and  with  tears  in  their  eyes 
have  told  me  of  their  misfortunes  and  how  every  thing  they 
had  has  been  sacrificed  in  the  vain  hope  of  recovering  their 
health,  I  should  be  less  than  a  man  if  I  were  to  hide  my 
light  under  a  bushel  and  refuse  to  help  the  needy  when  I 
know  that  I  have  the  means  to  do  so.  •  No,  rather  will  I  set 
my  light  high  up  that  the  whole  world  may  see  it  and 
benefit  by  its  rays.  None  need  look  if  they  do  not  want  it, 
but  it  is  certain  that  they  who  do  look  will  be  anxious  to 
investigate  and  to  ascertain  for  themselves  whether  the 
statements  I  make  are  true.  I  solicit  investigation,  for 
every  thing  I  say  will  bear  it,  and  it  is  gratifying  to  know 
that  others  can  test  my  sincerity. 

What  medical  science  writes  about  is  within  the  reach  of 
all,  although  only  those  who  have  been  duly  trained  can 
comprehend  the  mysteries  and  the  technicalities  with  which 
the  popular  mind  and  understanding  are  befogged.  But 
some  things  can  be  known.  We  know,  for  example,  that 
there  are  thousands  of  medicines  and  combinations  to  cure 
as  many  alleged  different  forms  of  disease ;  we  know  that 
there  are  many  diseases  which  are  classed  as  incurable,  and 
that  whoever  is  attacked  with  them  must  die ;  we  know 
that  there  are  numberless  different  forms  of  instruments 
with  which  to  operate  upon  the  human  body,  to  amputate 
limbs,  remove  bones,  cut  out  diseased  tissues,  and  mangle 
the  human  frame.  We  know  that  besides  these  there  are 
hundreds  of  different  forms  of  implements  with  which  to 
place  the  body,  or  parts  of  it,  in  suitable  positions  whereby 
to  facilitate  the  movements  of  the  microbes,  for  if  their 
action  be  impeded  the  blood  thickens  and  pain  is  the  result ; 
and  many  of  the  devices  for  this  purpose  are  exceedingly 
ingenious.  We  know  that  ice  is  used  in  some  cases,  hot 
water  in  others,  and  cold  water  again  in  others.  We  know 
that  some  are  burned  with  caustic,  others  are  thumped  with 
sticks  or  pounded  with  the  hands ;  some  are  covered  with 
plasters,  others  are  encased  in  rubber,  and  others  galvanized 
and  electrified.  And  all  these  things  and  a  thousand  others 
simply  to  kill  microbes. 


136  MICROBES. 


The  profession  own  some  of  the  finest  laboratories  and 
colleges  in  the  country,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars 
have  been  spent  upon  them,  and  new  doctors  go  out  from 
these  in  troops  every  year,  all  trained  in  medical  ethics  and 
the  doctrines  of  medical  science,  all  qualified  under  the  law 
to  practice  medicine  and  surgery,  all  privileged  to  kill,  all 
freely  sustained  and  protected  by  the  people  and  the  Legis- 
latures. They  ask,  and  they  have.  Any  legislation  they 
want  is  accorded  them.  They  hold  the  lives  of  the  people 
in  their  hands.  Their  certificate  can  set  the  law  in  motion, 
or  it  can  close  the  courts.  They  can  convict  the  prisoner 
or  acquit  him.  They  can  commit  a  man  to  a  lunatic  asylum, 
or  permit  him  to  exercise  the  privileges  of  a  citizen.  Their 
authority  may  at  times  be  above  that  of  the  courts,  for  no 
judge  will  dare  take  the  responsibility  of  defying  a  doctor's 
opinion  when  life  or  great  interests  are  involved.  No 
power  is  greater  than  that  which  we  sometimes  see  wielded 
by  a  legally  endowed  physician.  In  addition  to  this  he  has 
the  privilege  of  our  homes.  He  is  entrusted  with  secrets 
which  not  even  the  lawyers  know  of.  He  holds  in  his 
power  not  only  the  lives,  but  the  reputations  of  families. 
He  has  it  at  his  will  to  blast  the  record  of  persons  who 
before  the  world  are  immaculate.  He  is  the  receptacle  of 
knowledge  about  private  things  such  as  exists  nowhere  else, 
not  even  in  the  church,  and  nothing  but  his  honor  guards 
it.  It  is  a  vast  power  and  responsibility,  and  people  do  not 
always  bear  it  in  mind,  but  it  is  all  given  by  the  law,  and  it 
exists  as  a  prerogative  obtained  with  the  piece  of  parch- 
ment that  carries  with  it  the  dignity  of  a  doctor's  degree. 

This  has  been  going  on  from  early  times,  and  still  young 
people  die  and  disease  is  neither  prevented  nor  cured.  We 
all  know  these  things,  or  we  can  know  them  by  a  little 
thought  and  consideration,  but  we  do  not  think  of  them, 
and  so  they  pass  unheeded.  But  here  comes  a  man  who 
sets  the  whole  institution  at  defiance,  who  is  prepared  to 
antagonize  the  whole  organization  of  medical  science.  He 
brings  you  a  jug  with  a  liquid,  whose  chief  constituent  is  what 


CHOLERA   MORBUS.     (BERLIN.) 


BACILLUS  ANTHRACIS  IN  LUNG.     (BERLIN.; 


HISTORY  OF  MY  DISCOVERY. 


'37 


the  body  most  needs  for  its  existence,  and  he  claims  and 
shows  by  indisputable  proof  that  he  can  do  with  that  liquid 
what  the  doctors  with  all  their  science,  study,  and  ex- 
perience, cannot  do.  The  discovery  is  an  unusual  one.  It 
involves  so  much  that  people  have  a  just  claim  to  insist 
upon  complete  conviction.  They  are  right  in  demanding 
absolute  proof.  The  risk  is  too  great  to  justify  any  one 
being  satisfied  with  a  mere  assertion.  When  anybody  is 
sick  he  does  not  want  to  experiment  with  himself,  or  to  be 
experimented  on  by  others  ;  he  wants  to  be  cured.  He  must 
find  something  that  is  useful,  not  something  that  will  prob- 
ably prove  ineffectual,  and  which  may  be  injurious.  I  offer 
to  cure  all  diseases  with  but  one  remedy,  and  to  stop  chil- 
dren dying  of  disease,  for  of  course  I  cannot  prevent  acci- 
dents— in  all  cases  that  are  taken  in  time,  and  where  my 
instructions  are  faithfully  followed.  This  is  undertaking  a 
great  deal,  and  it  would  be  worse  than  an  error  on  my  part 
to  make  it,  unless  I  knew  that  I  could  carry  it  out.  I  have 
this  certainty.  It  is  no  supposition,  no  theory.  I  have  the 
experience  and  the  proof,  and  I  wish  every  one  to  convince 
himself  as  fully  as  may  be  necessary. 


CHAPTER  X. 

HOW   TO   CURE   DISEASE  AND   PRESERVE   LIFE. 

WHAT  have  I  done  in  this  writing?  I  have  explained 
the  cause  of  sickness,  and  shown  that  drugs  cannot  kill 
microbes,  or,  to  put  it  differently,  that  they  cannot  purify 
the  blood  without  killing  the  patient.  I  have  described  my 
own  sickness,  and  how  I  cured  myself,  although  I  am  not 
a  doctor.  I  have  told  how  I  also  cured  everybody  who 
used  the  microbe  killer  in  time  and  according  to  instructions, 
using  it  in  sufficient  quantities  to  purify  the  blood  and  to 
build  up  the  system.  Nobody  can  deny  that  I  have  done 
this ;  nobody  does  deny  it.  My  imitators  are  evidence  in 
my  favor,  for  if  I  had  not  succeeded  I  should  not  have  been 
imitated,  and  they  have  by  their  conduct  testified  to  the  merits 
of  the  microbe  killer.  My  own  experiences  in  the  courts 
are  also  evidence,  and  they  go  to  show  also  that  I  have 
discovered  something  worth  fighting  for.  The  medical  press 
and  physicians  generally  take  such  an  interest  in  me  as  they 
never  took  before.  They  decry  me  as  an  ignorant  man,  one 
who  knows  nothing  about  medicine,  or  any  thing  but  the 
raising  of  beets  and  cabbages,  a  useful  thing  to  know,  by  the 
way,  and  an  honorable  business  too.  Possibly  florists  and 
nursery-men  could  tell  the  doctors  a  little  about  things 
that  belong  to  their  profession,  and  which  they  ought  to 
know,  for  botany  is  not  taught  in  their  medical  colleges 
here,  although  in  Europe  it  is  justly  esteemed  an  essential 
part  of  a  medical  education.  Then  after  abusing  me  for 
ignorance,  they  cry  that  I  am  killing  people  with  poisons, 
and  in  the  same  breath  they  pray :  "  Oh,  Heaven  aid  us, 

138 


HOW   TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE.      139 

and  make  these  microbe  killers  harmless !  Lord,  protect 
our  profession  !  "  (Vide  Appendix.) 

Rest  assured  if  I  had  killed  anybody  the  doctors  would 
not  have  been  content  to  talk  about  it.  They  would  have 
had  me  in  jail  long  ago.  The  law  gives  them  the  power, 
and  they  are  not  likely  to  waive  their  rights.  They  would 
have  prosecuted  me  relentlessly.  The  public  will  not  be 
deceived  by  their  talk  about  my  killing  my  patients.  If  I 
had  ever  done  such  a  thing  I  should  not  be  free  now  to  pen 
these  words,  and  any  appeal  to  Congress  for  relief  would 
have  been  useless.  It  should  be  sufficient  testimony  to  the 
worth  of  my  discovery  and  to  my  not  having  killed  or  injured 
any  one,  that  within  two  years  the  people  have  taken  this 
thing  into  their  own  hands,  that  they  have  formed  com- 
panies, spent  money,  erected  seventeen  factories,  and  ex- 
tended their  operations  not  only  throughout  the  United 
States  but  into  Canada  and  England.  That  the  microbe  killer 
has  succeeded  wherever  it  has  been  introduced,  means  that  it 
is  at  least  worthy  of  investigation  and  trial.  It  means  also 
that  it  possesses  merits  which  commend  it  to  the  people. 
In  short,  knowing  what  I  do  about  it,  knowing  that  it  is 
capable  of  doing  much  good,  and  with  the  testimony  that  I 
have  to  its  success,  I  should  not  be  warranted  in  withholding 
it.  It  is  a  duty  of  all  of  us  to  benefit  our  fellows  when  we 
can,  and  I  should  be  no  more  justified  in  retaining  the 
microbe  killer  for  my  own  private  use,  than  I  should  be  in 
refusing  to  help  my  neighbor  whose  house  might  be  afire. 

I  have  not  yet  referred  to  the  value  of  my  discover}'-  in 
the  treatment  of  leprosy.  More  about  that  will  have  to  be 
said,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  is  beneficial,  and  that  the 
leprosy  microbe  can  be  destroyed,  that  too  with  the  same 
medicine  that  saves  the  lives  of  little  children.  I  make  no 
unreasonable  demand,  therefore,  when  I  ask  for  some  credit 
to  be  given  me,  and  if  further  I  can  preserve  the  lives  of  any 
of  the  reader's  friends  I  shall  feel  well  compensated  for  the 
publication  of  my  book,  and  for  all  the  slander,  vituperation, 
and  trouble  that  I  have  had  to  submit  to. 


I4O  MICROBES. 


I  now  come  to  the  question :  How  can  we  cure  disease 
and  preserve  life  ?  The  answer  to  this  problem  is  simple ; 
Use  the  microbe  killer  ;  read  this  book  and  act  up  to  instruc- 
tions. But  do  not  wait  till  sickness  comes  upon  you. 
Prepare  for  it  by  a  careful  perusal  of  all  that  I  have 
written.  A  clear  understanding  will  thus  be  obtained  of 
the  nature  of  disease,  of  the  principles  upon  which  it  must 
be  treated,  and  of  the  only  remedy  which  fully  meets  all 
requirements  and  enables  the  patient  to  save  the  expense 
and  delay  of  consulting  a  doctor.  For  not  only  is  the 
microbe-killer  effectual  in  doing  all  that  I  promise  for  it, 
but  it  brings  a  certain  remedy  home  to  everybody,  so  that 
doctors'  bills  are  saved.  It  simplifies  treatment.  Every- 
body who  follows  me  in  my  statements  will  comprehend 
the  cause  of  disease,  and  will  have  a  cure  at  hand.  Valu- 
able time  is  often  lost  even  in  sending  for  a  doctor.  People 
do  not  want  him  if  they  can  help  it.  They  do  not  want  to 
pay  out  the  money  which  his  attendance  involves.  But 
here  with  the  microbe  killer  ready  near  by  no  time  need  be 
wasted,  and  it  can  be  used  at  once  and  all  trouble  and 
annoyance  will  be  spared. 

As  already  explained  every  thing  created  is  from  the  first 
in  danger  of  destruction.  Nature  demands  change.  Just 
as  every  particle  of  matter  is  in  motion,  so  in  like  manner 
an  alteration  of  form  is  a  universal  law.  The  first  breath 
that  a  young  child  takes  in  all  probability  implies  the  intro- 
duction of  microbes,  even  if  there  were  none  derived  from 
the  parent.  I  have  already  referred  to  this,  but  a  little 
more  elucidation  may  be  desirable,  as  I  write  to  throw  as 
much  light  as  possible  upon  the  subject.  There  is  no  mere 
supposition  about  this  question.  Microbes  are  not  a  theory. 
We  know  what  they  are  and  where  they  most  abound. 
Pasteur  exposed  twenty  flasks  containing  clear  broth  in  the 
open  air  in  the  country  on  the  sea  level,  and  very  soon  eight 
had  become  affected  with  micro-organisms  and  were  ferment- 
ing. On  the  Jura  Mountains  only  five  out  of  twenty  fer- 
mented, while  at  a  height  of  six  thousand  feet  above  the 


HOW   TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE   LIFE.      141 

sea  only  one  was  affected.  This  showed  what  has  since 
been  verified,  that  the  higher  the  altitude  the  fewer  the 
microbes.  They  are  also  increased  in  the  neighborhood  of 
human  dwellings,  and  when  the  air  is  still  they  have  a  ten- 
dency to  settle  downwards,  showing  merely  that  they  are 
heavier  than  the  atmosphere.  The  aeroscope  is  an  instru- 
ment devised  by  M.  Pouchet  for  collecting  dust  from  the 
air,  and  it  is  found  to  consist  chiefly  of  remnants  of  articles 
in  use,  generally  in  the  form  of  impalpable  dust,  particles 
of  inorganic  matter,  sometimes  pollen  of  flowers,  and  the 
spores  of  minute  vegetals,  moulds,  and  microbes.  Experi- 
ments have  shown  that  dry  dust  and  earth,  especially  from 
hospitals,  is  filled  with  micro-organisms,  but  that  the  evap- 
oration of  water  from  the  ground  does  not  carry  them  with 
it.  Their  existence  was  shown  microscopically  more  than 
two  centuries  ago,  but  their  activity  as  agents  in  organic 
life  was  not  recognized. 

Last  year  a  valuable  paper  on  the  subject  was  read  by  Dr. 
Samuel  N.  Nelson,  of  Boston,  before  the  American  Academy 
of  Medicine,  which  I  propose  to  notice  more  fully  in  the 
Appendix  to  this  volume,  but  he  quotes  an  opinion  as  to  the 
use  of  these  micro-organisms  which  aptly  comes  in  here. 
Some  are  doubtless  harmless  in  the  human  body  so  far  as 
the  production  of  disease  is  concerned,  but  it  has  long  been 
thought  that  they  accomplish  a  great  work  in  Nature.  The 
yeast  plant,  for  example,  does  not  give  rise  to  dangerous 
symptoms  when  taken  into  the  system ;  on  the  contrary, 
it  is  frequently  employed  as  a  curative  agent,  yet  its  powerful 
influence  is  understood  all  the  world  over. 

Sir  William  Robertson  writes  thus :  "  Without  microbes 
there  could  be  no  putrefaction,  and  without  putrefaction 
the  waste  materials  thrown  off  by  the  animal  and  vegetable 
kingdoms  could  not  be  consumed.  Instead  of  being  broken 
up  as  they  are  now,  and  restored  to  the  earth  and  air  in  a 
fit  state  to  nourish  new  generations  of  plants,  they  would 
remain  as  an  intolerable  incubus  on  the  organic  world.  Plants 
would  languish  for  want  of  nutriment,  and  animals  would 


142  MICROBES. 


be  hampered  by  their  own  excreta  and  by  the  dead  bodies 
of  their  mates  and  predecessors — in  short,  the  circle  of  life 
would  be  wanting  an  essential  link.  A  large  proportion  of 
our  food  is  prepared  by  the  agency  of  micro-organisms.  We 
are  indebted  to  certain  bacteria  for  our  butter,  cheese,  and 
vinegar.  Our  daily  bread  is  made  with  yeast,  and  to  the 
yeast  plant,  discovered  independently  by  Cagniard  de  la 
Tour  and  Schwann  in  1836,  we  owe  our  wine,  beer,  and 
spirituous  liquors.  As  the  generator  of  alcohol  this  tiny 
cell  plays  a  larger  part  in  the  life  of  civilization  than  any 
other  tree  or  plant." 

The  sea  is  teeming  with  microbes,  but  not  of  the  kind 
that  we  find  in  the  air,  and  it  is  ascertained  that  these  latter 
rarely  extend  more  than  one  hundred  and  twenty  miles 
from  land,  and  generally  not  as  far.  Their  number  in  a 
room  depends  on  the  number  of  people  present.  This  has 
been  shown  by  carefully  conducted  experiments.  Thus  the 
increase  on  a  free  day  at  a  public  museum  is  about  six  hun- 
dred per  cent,  over  the  amount  on  a  pay  day,  and  if  the  num- 
ber in  an  empty  public  hall  be  represented  as  100,  the  increase 
during  a  meeting  will  be  equal  to  432.  Professor  Frankland 
found  that  in  a  barn  in  which  wheat  was  being  thrashed  it 
was  easy  to  count  eight  thousand  as  falling  upon  a  single 
foot  of  surface  in  one  minute,  showing  the  immense  number 
that  exist  in  dry  vegetable  matter  awaiting  only  heat  and 
moisture  to  multiply  and  induce  fermentation. 

These  facts  are  important  as  indicating  the  precautions 
that  should  be  taken  in  a  sick-room,  especially  quiet,  and 
the  absence  of  all  persons  who  are  not  absolutely  necessary. 
Temperature  is  an  important  factor  in  the  process  of  fer- 
mentation, and  it  seems  to  have  some  relation  to  the 
proportion  of  microbes  in  the  atmosphere.  Thus  there  are 
fewest  in  January,  and  if  the  number  in  that  month  be  taken 
as  unity,  they  increase  and  diminish  in  about  this  ratio : 
February,  4;  March,  6£  ;  April,  7 ;  May,  8  ;  June  13^  ;  July, 
16 ;  August,  26^ ;  September,  1 1 ;  October,  9  ;  November, 
5 ;  December,  5. 


CATARRH  OF  UTERUS. 


COMMON  CATARRH. 


HOW   TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE.      143 

When  a  young  child  is  sick,  no  matter  what  the  age  be,  no 
time  should  be  lost,  but  the  progress  of  the  disease  should  be 
checked  immediately  with  microbe  killer.  For  the  medicine 
may  be  used  with  perfect  safety  to  the  youngest  child,  even 
to  one  only  a  few  hours  old.  It  cleanses  the  blood,  pre- 
vents unhealthy  fermentation,  and  is  beneficial  in  all  diseases 
to  which  children  are  subject.  I  have  had  considerable  ex- 
perience with  children,  and  have  found  that  when  the 
microbe  killer  is  used  regularly  children  seldom  have  trouble 
of  any  kind,  thus  proving  that  it  acts  as  a  preventive  as  well 
as  a  cure.  This  might  be  expected,  because  by  the  habitual 
use  the  system  is  kept  in  good  order  and  microbes  are 
destroyed  as  fast  as  they  appear.  Children  are  fond  of  it. 
The  flavor  is  agreeable  and  they  take  it  readily,  and,  when 
they  are  allowed  to  do  so  regularly,  their  skins  become 
perfectly  clear  and  healthy.  The  capillary  circulation  be- 
comes normal,  the  little  ones  have  rosy  cheeks,  and  not  a 
pimple  or  spot  upon  their  bodies. 

We  can  preserve  wood  and  stone  from  fungi ;  it  is  natural 
therefore  that  we  should  preserve  the  body,  as  my  medicine 
proves  that  we  can.  It  only  needs  to  be  known  to  every 
family  as  it  is  to  me,  and  children  will  no  longer  be  down 
with  measles,  scarlet-fever,  or  any  of  the  other  troubles  of 
childhood.  They  will  take  the  microbe  killer  freely  in  time, 
when  the  very  first  symptoms  appear,  and  they  will  hear  no 
more  of  such  epidemics.  In  fact,  even  if  the  medicine  is  not 
used  habitually,  it  should  be  taken  whenever  any  disease  is 
prevalent  and  it  will  protect  the  person  from  an  attack. 

It  may  be  thought  that  by  constant  use  its  effects  will  be 
lost,  but  it  is  not  so.  Some  medicines,  especially  many 
aperients  and  cathartics,  do  act  in  that  way.  They  produce 
an  immediate  action  on  the  bowels,  and  a  torpidity  follows, 
just  as  the  action  of  some  medicine  is  cumulative,  like 
arsenic.  So  no  effect  may  be  produced  at  first,  and  then 
when  a  sufficient  amount  is  in  the  system  poisonous  symp- 
toms supervene. 

But  the  microbe  killer  is  a  tonic.     It  never  loses  its  power 


144  MICROBES. 


of  killing  micro-organisms,  and  is  more  effective  the  longer 
it  is  persevered  with,  and  it  acts  constantly,  strengthening 
the  system,  purifying  the  blood,  and  supplying  food  to  the 
blood  and  tissues  that  nature  demands.  It  may  therefore 
be  used  safely  and  advantageously  at  all  times,  and  it  is 
essential  when  contagious  diseases  are  prevalent,  no  matter 
what  names  be  given  to  them,  whether  typhoid  or  scarlet- 
fever,  small-pox,  cholera,  influenza,  or  what  not.  If  your 
child  has  already  been  in  the  doctor's  hands,  and  even  if  he 
has  given  it  up,  take  my  advice,  ask  him  to  send  in  his  bill, 
give  up  his  noxious  drugs  and  poisonous  medicines,  and 
avail  yourself  of  my  discovery, 

A  gentleman  in  Dallas,  Texas,  wrote  me  and  said  :  "  Mr. 
Radam,  your  microbe  killer  cured  our  baby,  and  I  can 
hardly  find  words  to  express  my  gratitude.  We  expected 
it  would  die.  The  doctor  told  us  he  had  done  all  he  could, 
and  advised  us  to  give  it  no  more  medicine.  He  gave  up 
all  hope  and  left.  He  had  no  sooner  done  so  than  the  wife 
of  one  of  our  neighbors  came  in  and  told  us  of  your  microbe 
killer.  We  read  your  circular,  and,  feeling  that  the  child 
would  die,  we  determined  to  try  it.  We  warmed  the  medi- 
cine slightly,  then  wrapped  the  child  in  flannels,  and  poured 
the  microbe  killer  all  over  the  body.  We  also  used  a  little 
as  an  injection,  mixed  with  starch,  and  gave  the  child  three 
teaspoon fuls  internally.  Then  the  child  was  wrapped  in 
warm  dry  flannels,  and,  to  our  surprise,  in  half  an  hour 
it  was  asleep,  and  not  asleep  only,  but  it  slept  quietly 
till  early  morning,  and  then  awoke  laughing  and  free  from 
pain.  It  nursed  freely,  and  the  milk  was  not  rejected  by 
the  stomach.  We  continued  the  medicine ;  the  child  con- 
tinued to  improve,  and  is  now  living." 

For  aught  I  know  to  the  contrary  it  still  lives.  The  case 
is  instructive,  for  if  the  father  had  been  content  with  merely 
administering  the  microbe  killer  internally,  I  doubt  if  he 
would  have  cured  the  child.  Its  illness  had  advanced  too 
far,  and  it  was  necessary  to  use  the  medicine  externally,  as 
well  as  internally,  to  attack  the  microbes,  wherever  they 


HO W   TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE.      145 

could  be  reached.  The  case  shows  also  that  we  may  be 
able  to  rescue  a  patient,  even  from  the  edge  of  the  grave,  if 
we  go  the  right  way  to  do  it,  and  if  we  are  able  to  act 
with  an  understanding  of  Nature's  laws  and  methods,  so 
that  we  may  see  the  importance  of  using  the  medicine 
in  such  a  way  as  to  permeate  all  the  tissues,  and  thus  as  it 
were  soak  the  body,  just  as  the  railway  tie  is  soaked,  as  I 
have  before  explained. 

The  microbe  killer  contains  no  drugs  of  an  organic  char- 
acter. It  is  simply  a  solution  of  gases,  which  pass  readily 
through  the  tissues,  much  as  the  perspiration  passes  through 
the  pores  of  the  skin,  and  thus  they  get  into  the  blood  and 
circulate  throughout  the  system.  It  will  be  seen,  therefore, 
how  important  it  is  to  thoroughly  carry  the  remedy  every- 
where, to  leave  no  part  of  the  body  free  to  enable  the 
microbes  to  increase ;  and  the  facility  with  which  this 
medicine  passes  thus  into  every  tissue  and  to  the  remotest 
parts,  by  means  of  the  capillary  vessels,  adds  very  much  to 
its  great  value. 

In  serious  diseases  which  run  their  course  quickly,  and  in 
the  treatment  of  which  prompt  action  is  important,  such  as 
typhoid  and  scarlet-fevers,  measles,  small-pox,  and  the  like, 
external  applications  are  also  necessary  and  important. 
The  skin  absorbs  the  active  principle  of  the  medicine,  al- 
most as  freely  and  as  quickly,  sometimes  even  more  quickly 
than  the  absorption  through  the  stomach,  and  its  effects 
must  in  such  diseases  be  obtained  as  rapidly  as  possible. 
But  in  ordinary  diseases,  especially  where  treatment  can  be 
begun  without  delay,  internal  dosing  in  sufficient  quantities 
will  effect  a  cure,  and,  as  already  stated,  it  acts  as  a  preven- 
tive when  taken  during  health. 

Some  doctors  have  asserted  that  the  microbe  killer  con- 
tains poisonous  drugs.  It  is  a  bare  assertion,  made  in 
complete  ignorance  of  what  it  really  is ;  but  the  folly  of 
such  statements  is  apparent  on  its  face,  for  if  such  were  the 
case  how  could  it  be  administered  in  large  doses  to  children 
without  injuring  them  ?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  contains,  as 


146  MICROBES. 


I  have  said,  no  drug  at  all.  If  it  were  what  these  doctors 
say,  it  would  soon  kill  itself.  No  poisonous  medicine  such 
as  they  describe  would  be  allowed  to  exist.  The  people 
would  soon  find  it  out,  and  they  would  not  have  it.  The 
microbe  killer  is  harmless,  and  that  it  cures  all  who  use  it 
according  to  directions  is  an  assertion  that  proves  itself. 

When  a  child  is  taken  sick,  no  matter  what  the  sickness 
may  be  or  what  name  the  doctor  chooses  to  apply  to  it,  re- 
member what  I  said  at  the  beginning  of  this  book.  The 
disease  is  caused  by  a  microbe,  possibly  a  special  microbe, 
and  your  duty  then  is  to  use  the  medicine  immediately,  as 
long  as  necessary,  and  as  freely  as  possible,  until  the  child  is 
cured,  as  it  most  assuredly  will  be.  Young  children  require 
less  than  adults,  and  I  have  found  that  small  people  can  do 
with  less  than  larger  ones,  as  might  be  anticipated  from  the 
method  by  which  the  medicine  is  known  to  operate._  It  is 
not  necessary,  for  example,  to  use  as  much  to  secure  a  com- 
plete saturation  of  the  tissues  in  a  small  body  as  in  a  large 
one.  For  very  small  children  two  teaspoonfuls  will  usually 
suffice  for  a  dose,  and  this  may  be  repeated  as  often  as 
is  necessary,  but  every  six  hours  is  about  the  frequency  that 
I  find  to  answer.  The  size,  age,  and  temperament  of  the 
patient  all  have  to  be  considered.  In  the  treatment  of 
wounds,  ulcers,  boils,  or  local  inflammations,  poultices  of 
linseed  meal  saturated  with  the  microbe  killer  should  be 
kept  constantly  applied  to  the  surface,  and  the  internal 
treatment  should  be  attended  to  at  the  same  time.  Here  I 
would  again  direct  attention  to  the  method  described  by  my 
correspondent  and  patient,  Mrs.  D.  F.  C.,  of  Portland,  Ore- 
gon, on  page  131,  whose  testimony  as  to  its  value  in  curing 
pain  should  be  conclusive.  But  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that,  whenever  employed  externally,  it  should  also  be  used 
internally  at  the  same  time.  This  is  necessary.  Taken 
internally  it  purifies  the  blood,  and  when  used  externally 
some  may  become  absorbed  ;  but  its  chief  value  then  is 
to  relieve  pain  and  to  prevent  the  increase  of  microbes  on 
the  injured  surface.  A  wound  left  exposed  or  improperly 


HOW   TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE.      \tf 

attended  to  becomes  a  nidus  for  microbes,  sometimes  in  the 
simplest  form,  as  micrococci  or  as  bacteria  or  bacilli,  but  the 
result  is  the  same,  whether  they  be  in  the  form  of  simple 
cells  or  as  tubular*or  spiral  bodies. 

Twelve  hundred  years  ago  this  was  known.  Paul  d'Egeneta 
understood  the  phenomenon  of  fermentation  and  putrefac- 
tion ;  and  more  than  two  hundred  years  ago  the  cause  was 
correctly  described  by  Megatus.  Surgeons  in  the  sixteenth 
century  found  that  wounds  healed  better  if  not  exposed  to 
the  air,  and  one  of  the  ablest  surgeons  of  that  day,  Ambrose 
Pare,  said  that  gun-shot  wounds  which  under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances would  prove  fatal,  might  be  cured  if  kept  covered 
and  not  dressed  too  frequently. 

The  process  of  fermentation  has  always  been  known,  at 
any  rate  so  far  as  history  carries  us,  and  it  is  understood 
among  savages,  but  it  was  only  about  the  date  given  that  it 
was  identified  with  putrefaction.  The  air  containing  micro- 
organisms in  large  quantities, — if  these  fall  upon  a  wound,  or 
an  ulcer,  there  will  be  some  which  will  find  it  a  suitable  place 
for  reproduction,  and  then  fermentation,  inflammation,  sup- 
puration, and  possibly  gangrene  may  be  the  consequence. 
But  if  this  be  stopped,  as  it  may  be  by  the  prompt  applica- 
tion of  the  microbe  killer,  the  wound  heals,  the  process  of 
nature  being  uninterrupted,  and  none  of  those  dangerous 
results  ensue.  The  rationale  of  this  must  be  clear. 

It  is  my  firm  conviction,  taught  me  by  experience,  that  if 
a  child  dies  it  is  from  some  cause  that  might  be  prevented. 
I  do  not  refer  to  children  who  inherit  disease  from  parents 
to  such  a  degree  that  their  lives  are  forfeited  as  soon  as  they 
are  born,  but  to  all  ordinary  cases  of  disease.  For  example, 
the  remedy  may  be  applied  too  late,  or  in  insufficient  doses, 
or  in  a  manner  contrary  to  directions,  or  it  may  have  been 
given  irregularly,  or  not  continued  long  enough.  When 
death  occurs  in  such  circumstances  it  is  the  fault  of  the 
nurse,  not  of  the  medicine. 

Nothing  is  easier  than  to  cure  children,  if  action  be  prompt 
and  effective.  They  are  easily  affected  by  disease,  but  so, 


148  MICROBES. 


too,  their  system  readily  yields  to  medicine,  and  with  com- 
petent attention  rules  are  more  easily  carried  out. 

It  is  much  more  difficult  to  cure  chronic  disease,  whether 
it  be  of  years'  or  only  of  months'  duration.  And  to  return 
to  my  former  similes,  the  florist  finds  it  in  truth  more  diffi- 
cult to  attend  to  his  seedlings  and  to  protect  them  from 
fungus,  than  it  is  to  defend  children  from  the  attacks  of 
microbes,  of  which  the  doctors  know  nothing. 

When  a  plant  has  become  matured  and  the  wood  is  hard- 
ened, it  can  withstand  more  rough  usage,  and  so  it  is  with 
the  human  family.  Statistics  show  that  there  is  a  greater 
mortality  among  children  than  among  grown  people.  A 
child  cannot  describe  its  symptoms ;  it  merely  cries  with 
pain  and  discomfort.  Then  comes  the  doctor,  who  guesses 
what  kind  of  microbe  has  got  hold  of  it,  and  in  accordance 
with  his  theories  he  puts  up  a  lot  of  drugs  which  are  prob- 
ably no  antiseptics  at  all.  They  do  not  affect  the  microbes, 
which  go  on  producing  a  state  of  fermentation  in  the  child's 
body,  and  are  possibly  encouraged  rather  than  otherwise  by 
the  medicines  that  have  been  administered.  In  this  case  the 
child  grows  worse,  the  doctor  gives  it  up,  and  presently  it 
dies.  The  doctor  did  all  he  knew,  but  he  was  ignorant  of 
the  true  cause  of  the  sickness,  and  more  likely  hastened  the 
child's  decease  instead  of  doing  any  thing  to  prevent  it. 
What  is  this  but  child-murder?  Legalized  it  may  be,  but 
nevertheless  it  is  increasing  mortality  where  it  ought  to  be, 
and  where  it  can  be,  diminished.  I  never  see  a  hearse  pass- 
ing my  window  without  deploring  the  ignorance  that  prevails 
among  the  members  of  that  profession  whom  the  law  allows 
to  carry  our  lives  in  their  hands. 

The  treatment  of  older  children  and  young  people  is  simi- 
lar to  that  of  young  children,  only  it  requires  longer  time 
usually  and  more  of  the  medicine  to  perfect  a  saturation  of 
the  body.  It  also  usually  requires  more  time  to  complete  a 
purification  of  the  blood.  Chronic  diseases  require  still  longer 
time  and  more  medicine.  They  are  long  coming,  and  they 
go  slowly.  In  them  the  process  of  fermentation  probably 


' 


. 

-  *.  f>..-.-f* 

•      . 

r  -:  ,  V.  .  , 
,'  'a;'.*    • 


DIPHTHERIA. 


.FROM    ENLARGED  TONSILS.     (PARIS.) 


HOW   TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE.      149 

began  years  before  the  disease  made  itself  felt.  Then  the 
microbes  have  probably  advanced  to  such  an  extent  that  the 
circulation  of  the  blood  is  impeded,  the  microbes  clogging 
up  the  vessels,  causing  pain,  and  not  until  then  perhaps  does 
the  person  complain  of  being  sick.  Even  these  diseases  can 
be  cured  by  the  microbe  killer  if  it  be  taken  with  enough 
perseverance,  so  that  not  only  the  microbes  are  destroyed, 
but  the  red  corpuscles  of  the  blood  are  renovated,  the  circu- 
lation freed,  and  the- red  color  of  the  skin  restored  through 
a  complete  action  of  the  capillary  vessels.  Young  women 
about  arriving  at  maturity  should  use  the  medicine  freely. 
It  purifies  the  blood,  and  increases  the  tone  of  the  system, 
arousing  the  circulation,  so  that  they  would  not  feel  the 
change.  In  the  same  way  it  is  useful  to  women  looking 
forward  to  maternity.  It  is  beneficial  to  the  child,  keeping 
the  blood  in  a  strong  and  healthy  condition,  and  assisting 
the  mother  both  before  and  during  confinement.  It  also 
tends  to  facilitate  the  flow  of  milk,  and  to  render  it  more 
nutritive  to  the  child. 

Where  there  is  any  sickness  there  is  some  blood  impurity 
— that  is,  microbes  are  at  work,  and  fermentation  to  a  greater 
or  less  extent  is  going  on,  and  the  microbe  killer  is  the  only 
discovery  yet  made  which  directs  itself  immediately  to  the 
cause  of  the  disease. 

Ladies  can  find  ample  testimony  from  those  of  their  own 
sex  as  to  the  value  of  my  medicine  to  themselves.  There  is 
much  to  discover,  and  much  yet  to  learn,  and  it  is  not  my 
wish  to  keep  back  any  thing  that  has  been  ascertained  by  me 
since  I  made  my  first  cures.  I  must  therefore  touch  upon 
this  more  fully. 

The  discharges  attending  menstruation,  when  examined 
under  a  powerful  microscope,  show  blood  containing  vast 
quantities  of  microbes.  Investigations  made  among  many 
patients  always  show  that  the  darkest  blood  is  a  mass  of 
living  micro-organisms,  and  that  when  women  complain 
most  of  pain  in  the  back,  headache,  neuralgia,  etc.,  they  are 
suffering  from  these  enormous  quantities  of  microbes. 


1 50  MICROBES. 


When  women  thus  affected  have  taken  the  microbe  killer 
for  several  months,  the  character  of  the  discharges  changes. 
It  becomes  red,  and  when  examined  it  is  found  to  be  free 
from  microbes ;  the  woman  at  the  same  time  suffers  no  more. 
The  headache  and  pain  in  the  back  have  left  her,  the  periods 
are  more  normal  and  free  from  inconvenience,  and  the  patient 
puts  on  a  healthy  appearance.  Her  eyes  are  bright,  and  her 
complexion  is  clear,  and  she  has  more  energy. 

My  first  discoveries  of  this  kind  showed  the  nature  and 
cause  of  woman's  sufferings  at  these  times,  and  that  it  is 
Nature  again  acting  on  her  own  laws,  the  pain  and  incon- 
veniences being  caused  by  .a  process  of  fermentation  as 
usual,  and  the  pain  ceasing  when  the  cause  of  that  process 
is  removed. 

But  such  cases  are  not  cured  right  away.  It  is  absurd  to 
suppose  that  they  can  be,  and  it  would  be  wrong  for  me  to 
say  that  they  can.  The  blood  must  be  purified,  and  as  the 
microbes  must  be  killed,  the  remedy  must  be  one  that 
accomplishes  this  object  and  thereby  puts  a  stop  to  fer- 
mentation. At  the  same  time,  no  antiseptic  can  take  effect 
until  it  has  entered  the  cells  by  passing  through  their  walls, 
and  so  can  be  brought  into  contact  with  their  contents. 
This  explains  how  persons  are  deceived  by  those  medicines 
which  are  given  to  purify  the  blood,  and  which  have  no 
power  whatever  to  destroy  the  causes  which  render  im- 
purity possible.  Medicines  which  have  no  effect  upon  the 
life  of  micro-organisms  cannot  purify  the  blood,  and  none  of 
the  medicines  used  for  the  purpose  do  accomplish  that  end. 
We  must  have  something  that  kills  microbes,  and  hence  the 
value  and  necessity  of  my  discovery,  for,  as  I  have  shown, 
there  is  nothing  else  that  does  that  without  also  killing  the 
patient. 

Any  one  who  advertises  or  claims  to  be  able  to  purify  the 
blood  should  prove  that  he  does  so,  and  if  he  will  allow 
his  medicine  to  be  fairly  tested,  it  is  quite  easy  to  ascertain 
whether  it  will  do  all  that  is  promised  for  it,  because  if  it 
cannot  prevent  fermentation,  it  certainly  cannot  do  what  is 


HOW    TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE.      I$I 

promised  for  it ;  and  if  it  will  do  that,  it  can  cure  disease 
everywhere,  whether  in  man  or  other  animals.  If  anybody 
doubts  this  or  fails  to  understand  it,  I  have  tangible, 
visible  evidence  that  I  can  produce,  but  I  hardly  think  that 
the  people  generally  will  fail  to  find  ample  proof  in  the  cures 
I  have  already  effected.  These  should  alone  be  convincing, 
even  though  my  medicine  is  the  same  for  all,  and  I  myself, 
in  place  of  being  a  professor  with  a  long  name,  am  nothing 
more  than  a  close  observer  of  Nature. 

This  is  certain,  that  Nature  cannot  be  denied.  Whatever 
she  teaches  is  beyond  contradiction  at  the  hands  of  the 
doctors,  and  medical  science,  if  there  be  any  science  in 
medicine,  is  not  in  a  position  to  oppose  it.  But  I  do  not  see 
the  science.  I  know  the  profession  is  wrong,  emphatically 
wrong,  and  my  only  wonder  is  how  people  can  allow  them- 
selves to  be  misled  by  it.  Let  me  not  be  misunderstood.  I 
do  not  say  that  there  are  not  some  good  and  useful  medi- 
cines. But  those,  for  instance,  which  are  useful  to  regulate 
the  bowels  cannot  be  called  blood  purifiers.  Even  those  act 
indifferent  ways, — some  influencing  the  functions  of  the  liver 
and  other  organs,  others  increasing  the  peristaltic  motions 
of  the  intestines,  others  again  producing  an  exosmosis  from 
the  lining  membranes,  and  so  on.  But  none  of  these  actions 
implies  a  purification  of  the  blood.  There  are  probably 
thousands  of  medicines  sold  as  blood  purifiers.  Some  of 
them,  through  being  kept  constantly  before  the  people,  are 
popular,  and  occasionally  they  may  do  some  good,  or  if  they 
do  not,  people  think  they  do.  They  are  announced  as  being 
free  from  mineral  compounds,  and  the  medicine  man  declares 
they  are  made  exclusively  from  herbs,  roots,  barks,  seeds^ 
and  so  on.  Now  the  fact  is  that  those  things  would  ferment 
and  they  would  promote  fermentation  in  the  blood,  and  to 
prevent  that  the  manufacturer  of  the  compound  uses  alcohol 
or  whiskey  as  a  preservative.  If  he  did  not  do  that  the  stuff 
would  breed  microbes  in  the  bottle  in  which  it  is  sold. 

Any  one  can  prove  this  for  himself  by  taking  some  of  the 
vegetable  compounds,  diluting  them  with  water,  or  make  an 


152  MICROBES. 


infusion  of  the  roots  or  herbs,  add  to  them  any  of  the  fluids 
or  excretions  of  the  body, — add  the  ferment  with  the  medi- 
cine,— and  keep  the  mixture  closed  in  a  bottle.  In  a  short 
time  you  will  see  whether  or  not  the  medicine  has  prevented 
fermentation.  You  need  not  be  an  expert  with  the  micro- 
scope. You  will  see  the  process  going  on  rapidly.  If,  then, 
the  medicine  that  you  are  asked  to  take  increases  fermenta- 
tion, how  in  the  world  is  it  going  to  cure  you  ?  This 
experiment  you  can  pursue  with  any  of  the  nostrums  that 
are  offered  to  the  public  and  which  are  prescribed,  and  you 
can  learn  for  yourself  without  swallowing  them  whether  they 
are  likely  to  accomplish  what  is  promised  for  them.  Or  you 
may  take  a  piece  of  lean  meat,  place  it  in  a  bottle  with  any 
of  the  popular  medicines,  and  see  whether  they  prevent 
fermentation  and  the  formation  of  microbes. 

This,  however,  must  be  remembered  :  Suppose  that  any 
particular  remedy  stands  the  test.  In  order  that  it  shall  be 
efficient  as  a  medicine  it  must  be  of  such  a  nature  that  it  can 
be  taken  like  water,  so  as  to  saturate  the  body,  permeating  all 
the  tissues.  A  small  quantity  taken  into  the  stomach  is  of 
no  use.  You  may  take  strong  alcohol  and  it  will  stand  the 
test,  but  can  you  saturate  your  body  with  it?  You  may, 
indeed,  go  on  experimenting  until  you  have  covered  all  the 
drugs  known  to  the  doctors,  and  still  you  will  not  find  one 
that  will  effectually  kill  microbes  without  also  killing  the 
patient. 

Many  things  will  give  relief.  Chloroform,  morphine, 
mercury,  and  numberless  drugs  will,  on  occasion,  do  that : 
but  relief  is  not  cure.  Many  persons  have  told  me — some 
personally,  others  by  letter — that  years  ago  they  had  some 
form  of  disease,  that  they  went  possibly  to  some  celebrated 
doctor  and  got  well.  Then,  some  years  later,  they  had 
another  attack  of  the  same  disease,  and  again  they  got  well 
under  some  physician's  care ;  and  now  they  have  it  again. 
The  truth  is,  these  people  never  were  cured.  They  were 
simply  relieved  either  by  a  partial  suppression  of  the  microbes, 
or  by  driving  them  to  other  parts  of  the  body. 


HOW  TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE.      153 

Persons  have  often  come  to  me  who  had  suffered  from 
cancer.  They  showed  me  where  it  had  been  removed  by 
the  knife  or  checked  by  plasters.  At  the  time  they  had 
thought  themselves  cured,  but  now  evidences  of  cancer  were 
appearing  in  various  parts  of  their  bodies,  and  it  was  more 
severe  than  it  had  been  at  first.  Cutting  away  portions  of 
the  human  body  that  are  diseased  in  that  way  is  evidence 
of  the  grossest  ignorance.  If  a  person  have  cancer  of  the 
tongue,  a  removal  of  that  organ  will  not  cure  him.  If  he 
have  cancer  in  the  throat,  the  removal  of  a  portion  will  not 
cure  him.  The  amputation  of  a  leper's  limbs  would  not 
remove  the  leprosy.  Whereas,  if  we  can  purify  the  blood, 
there  is  no  occasion  even  to  think  of  the  knife,  and  this  refers 
to  almost  any  kind  of  surgical  operation. 

They  say  that  exceptions  prove  the  rule,  and  I  will  name 
one.  There  are  cases  where,  from  some  cause  or  other, 
mortification  supervenes  on  an  injury.  As  soon  as  that 
process  stops,  of  which  Nature  gives  unmistakable  signs, 
then  the  diseased  portion  may  be  safely  and  rightly  re- 
moved ;  for,  if  it  be  not  taken  away,  and  assuming  the  patient's 
health  to  continue  good,  Nature  herself  would  remove  it, 
but  the  process  would  be  slow  and  the  stump  would  be 
unsatisfactory. 

If  I  had  a  compound  fracture  of  one  of  my  limbs,  I  should 
be  content  to  keep  the  parts  in  place,  keep  the  wound 
saturated  with  microbe  killer  and  use  it  freely  internally, 
and  I  should  have  no  fear  for  the  results.  Microbes  would 
be  prevented  interfering  with  Nature,  and  I  know  that 
every  thing  then  would  progress  satisfactorily. 

Persons  whose  bodies  are  mutilated  usually  die  from  in- 
flammation— that  means  fermentation,  which  again  means 
microbes ;  but  if  the  microbe  killer  be  used  intelligently  no 
microbes  can  exist,  no  fermentation  can  take  place,  and, 
consequently,  there  can  be  no  inflammation. 

We  shall  always  require  surgeons.  That  is  certain.  There 
are  numberless  forms  of  accident  and  injury  where  their 
assistance  will  be  necessary,  but  in  all  their  work  the  microbe 


1 54  MICROBES. 


killer  must  fill  an  important  place,  since  it  stops  fermentation 
and  what  the  doctors  call  blood-poisoning,  which  is  simply 
blood  filled  with  microbes.  When  the  value  of  my  discovery 
is  fully  understood,  there  will  be  but  little  use  for  surgical 
instruments.  We  may  take  any  diseased  growth  on  the 
human  body,  call  it  lupus  or  cancer,  or  a  tumor,  or  what  you 
will,  there  was  a  time  when  it  had  a  beginning.  In  the 
future,  when  such  things  are  first  observed,  the  microbe 
killer  will  be  used  immediately,  and  thus  the  growth  will  be 
stopped  and  no  trouble  will  ensue. 

During  the  short  time  that  I  have  been  using  the  medicine, 
I  have  seen  many  cases  of  cancer,  ulcerated  sores,  abscesses, 
etc.,  etc.,  all  of  which  have  been  cured  by  a  free  use  of  the 
medicine.  Not,  recollect,  by  small  doses,  but  with  sufficient 
quantities  taken  regularly  and  perseveringly. 

If  we  remove  the  limb  from  a  tree,  and  at  once  stop  the 
cut  surface  and  protect  it  from  the  atmosphere  so  that  no 
fungus  shall  be  deposited  on  it,  the  heart  wood  will  not 
suffer,  and  the  tree  will  soon  protect  the  part  itself  by  the 
bark  growing  over  it.  But  if  the  exposed  section  be  not 
protected,  the  surface  will  soon  become  black  from  fungoid 
growths,  and  these  will'at  times  extend  throughout  the  tree, 
of  course  shortening  its  life.  The  same  process  goes  on  in 
the  human  body.  A  person  may  be  never  so  healthy,  but 
if  he  lose  a  limb  or  become  wounded,  and  microbes  are 
allowed  to  form  and  enter  into  the  blood,  his  life  may  be 
shortened  or  even  lost.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he  can  pre- 
vent fermentation  altogether,  the  parts  must  quickly  heal, 
and  no  further  injury  will  be  done  to  the  system. 

Antiseptic  plasters  so-called  cannot  be  of  any  use.  They 
cannot  do  any  good  in  surgical  operations.  They  cannot  be 
used  internally,  and,  consequently,  they  cannot  reach  the 
general  circulatory  system.  There  must  be  some  internal 
remedy  as  well,  and  something  that  can  be  used  so  freely 
that  it  may  saturate  all  the  tissues  and  thoroughly,  as  it 
were,  soak  the  body.  Most  surgical  work  must  cease.  The 
removal  of  limbs  for  leprosy  must  be  stopped.  All  cutting 


SYPHILIS  (?). 


BUBO.— SYPHILITIC   ULCERATION. 


HOW   TO   CURE   DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE.       155 

around  the  eyes,  face,  and  limbs  is  unnecessary.  Every  case 
can  be  cured  through  purification  of  the  blood  by  means  of 
the  microbe  killer. 

I  read  in  the  medical  papers  how  patients,  especially 
women,  after  being  drugged  with  chloroform  or  ether,  are 
cut  open,  diseased  portions  cut  away,  and  then  the  parts  are 
sewed  up  again.  Accounts  go  on  to  show  how  they  lived 
through  the  ordeal,  then  the  symptoms  are  reported,  the 
action  of  microbes  fs  duly  chronicled  under  another  name; 
inflammation  follows,  which  is  fermentation ;  fever  ensues, 
with  exhausting  perspiration  ;  appetite  fails,  and  the  patient 
succumbs — destroyed  by  the  destructive  action  of  microbes. 
Yet  this  is  called  surgical  science ! 

The  thoughtful  reader  must  acknowledge  that  I  do  not 
exaggerate  or  state  what  is  not  absolutely  true.  Let  him 
go  into  any  hospital  and  see  the  machinery  devised  for 
relieving  pain  and  enabling  patients  to  survive  these  terrible 
operations.  Let  him  picture  to  himself,  as  I  have  seen  it 
sketched  in  a  scientific  paper:  the  surgeon,  standing  with 
uplifted  knife,  and  clad  in  a  long  white  gown,  ready,  before 
fifty  or  more  young  students,  to  open  a  patient  who,  having 
first  been  chloroformed,  has  just  been  wheeled  into  the 
operating  theatre.  How  many  of  these  unfortunate  creatures 
survive  the  operation  ? 

Now  note  the  change  that  will  be  effected  when  my  own 
discovery  becomes  known.  Here  comes  a  man  with  a  jug 
who  takes  it  to  the  patient's  house.  The  patient  can  use  it 
himself  and  cure  himself  and  his  family  without  pain  or  risk 
by  simply  removing  the  microbes  from  his  blood.  And 
then  because  I  cure  people  in  this  way,  and  in  spite  of 
proof  that  I  do,  these  same  surgeons  and  physicians  appeal 
to  the  public  not  to  trust  me,  asserting  that  my  medicine  is 
poisonous,  that  it  must  kill  sooner  or  later,  and  they  try  to 
destroy  confidence  by  saying  that  it  is  made  by  a  man  who 
knows  nothing  whatever  about  medical  science.  "  He  is  no 
doctor,"  they  say.  "  He  has  no  diploma,  knows  nothing 
whatever  about  medicine,  and  is  simply  a  gardener."  Well 


1 56  MICROBES. 


they  may  go  on  saying  so  if  it  affords  them  any  satisfaction. 
I  will  go  on  proving  what  I  can  do,  and  in  due  time  the 
public  will  have  their  eyes  opened  to  the  backward  science 
of  the  medical  faculty, — that  too  at  no  very  distant  day. 

A  lady  came  to  me  at  Austin,  Texas,  who  had  been  under 
medical  treatment  fifteen  years.  None  could  cure  her,  and 
although  relieved  occasionally  she  was  worse  now  than  she 
had  been  years  before.  At  last  the  doctors  recommended  an 
operation  for  the  removal  of  what  seemed  to  be  a  tumor  in 
the  abdomen,  but  to  that  she  would  not  give  her  consent, 
for  she  regarded  it  justly  as  a  death-risking  experiment. 
One  of  my  first  experiences  was  with  that  lady,  and  I  treated 
her  gratuitously.  I  gave  her  the  microbe  killer  in  doses  of 
four  to  six  wineglassfuls  every  day  for  about  six  months. 
Twenty-four  hours  after  beginning  the  treatment  she  re- 
ported an  improvement  in  her  appetite.  Five  days  after 
that  she  suddenly  vomited  a  mass  of  fermented  matter  the 
size  of  a  hen's  egg.  She  suffered  from  constant  headache 
and  her  face  lacked  all  color,  showing  that  her  blood  was  in 
a  poor  condition  and  fermented.  But  she  gradually  im- 
proved. As  she  grew  stronger,  which  she  did  slowly  but 
steadily,  she  was  able  to  resume  her  household  duties,  a 
thing  she  had  not  done  for  several  years.  Her  terrible  pains 
ceased.  Her  natural  functions  were  restored,  and  nine 
months  from  the  date  of  the  first  treatment  by  me,  she  pub- 
lished a  statement  explaining  how  she  had  been  cured  by  the 
microbe  killer.  As  far  as  I  know,  that  lady  is  still  living  and 
in  good  health,  and  her  case  shows  that  my  discovery  can 
both  cure  and  heal. 

Healing  and  curing  are  very  different.  A  wound  may  be 
healed  and  disease  be  left  internally.  But  where  a  cure  is 
effected  the  blood  must  be  purified  and  the  disease  eradicated 
from  the  system.  A  doctor  may  heal,  but  he  never  cures. 

In  the  same  neighborhood  was  another  lady  similarly 
affected.  She  had  been  constantly  under  the  care  of  a 
doctor.  She  suffered  from  what  is  known  as  female  diseases, 
and  she  had  an  abscess  which  had  been  so  badly  attended  to 


HO W   TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE.      157 

that  worms  visible  to  the  naked  eye  came  from  it.  The 
doctors  had  cauterized  the  wound,  they  had  plastered  it  over 
with  medicaments  and  tried  all  the  means  they  knew,  but 
they  could  not  heal  it.  I  had  some  conversation  with  her 
husband,  who  said  on  one  occasion  :  "  Mr.  Radam,  if  you 
were  to  cure  the  rest  of  the  world  you  could  not  cure  my 
wife,  for  her  disease  is  peculiar  and  there  is  absolutely  no 
cure  for  it,  and  I  have  no  hope  of  any  being  found."  He 
consented,  however,  to  try.  I  gave  him  some  microbe  killer 
and  told  him  how  to  use  it.  I  knew  full  well  that  the  abscess 
was  only  an  outlet  for  the  microbes  which  filled  up  the 
whole  body,  and  that  it  was  worse  than  nonsense,  for  it  was 
dangerous,  to  try  to  heal  that  without  freeing  the  system 
itself  from  the  cause  of  the  disease.  If  I  wish  to  stop  water 
running  along  a  channel  I  must  go  to  the  source  and  stop  the 
spring  that  supplies  it. 

Many  similar  cases  came  to  me.  A  prominent  lady  in 
San  Francisco  once  called  upon  me  and,  as  she  had  been 
recommended  by  a  friend,  she  candidly  explained  to  me  all 
her  ailments.  A  glance  readily  told  me  that  she  was  cura- 
ble. Her  breathing  was  good,  and  her  lungs  were  evidently 
sound.  She  appeared  to  have  no  organic  disease,  but  only 
that  her  entire  system  was  in  a  state  of  fermentation.  She 
explained  to  me  that  she  could  not  sleep,  sit,  or  walk.  She 
was  suffering  from  extreme  nervous  depression  and  irrita- 
bility, and  to  allay  that  and  to  make  her  life  endurable  she 
was  constantly  taking  morphine.  She  had  had  disease  of 
the  rectum  and  bladder  and  had  gone  through  an  operation 
for  disease  of  the  womb.  She  was  a  great  sufferer  from 
dyspepsia,  and  could  only  at  times  retain  food  upon  her 
stomach,  so  that  it  was  necessary  to  be  very  careful  with  her 
diet,  and  she  was  a  martyr  to  headache. 

This  lady  was  wife  of  a  senator  and  had  spent  a  great  deal  of 
her  time  in  Washington,  and  having  been  sick  many  years  she 
had  consulted  some  of  the  most  celebrated  doctors  at  the 
capital.  It  was  evident  to  me  at  once,  from  what  she  told 
me  and  from  what  I  could  judge  for  myself,  that  these 


158  MICROBES. 


doctors  had  never  cured  her  of  any  thing.  They  had  simply 
relieved  her  from  time  to  time,  and  then  by  using  powerful 
and  poisonous  drugs  as  local  applications  only.  Of  course 
the  fermented  blood  was  untouched.  It  had  never  been 
freed  from  microbes  and  purified,  but  left  to  ferment  in 
increased  ratio,  as  it  always  will  when  the  cause  of  the  fer- 
mentation is  allowed  to  increase  and  multiply.  The  condi- 
tion she  was  in  was  precisely  the  same  as  that  of  many 
hundreds  of  women  at  this  moment. 

I  knew  that  I  could  cure  her.  if  she  would  follow  instruc- 
tions, but  I  had  great  misgivings  whether  she  would 
persevere  long  enough,  as  it  was  necessary  to  take  time 
and  to  begin  gradually.  I  explained  the  law  of  Nature  to 
her,  that  the  medicine  must  remove  all  the  microbes  that 
now  abounded  in  her  blood,  together  with  all  seeds  and 
germs  and  every  thing  that  would  encourage  their  growth. 
This  I  told  her  would  require  some  months,  and  possibly 
it  might  be  a  few  months  before  she  would  experience  any 
marked  improvement.  It  would  be  necessary  then  to  reno- 
vate and  build  up  the  system,  all  of  which  would  require 
time.  But  she  had  confidence.  She  had  heard  of  the  many 
cures  I  had  made  in  San  Francisco,  and  she  believed  what  I 
told  her.  She  thereupon  promised  to  carry  out  my  instruc- 
tions as  faithfully  as  she  possibly  could,  for  she  seemed 
to  feel  that  in  the  microbe  killer  was  her  last  hope. 

I  instructed  her  to  drink  the  No.  I,  a  mild  grade,  at  first, 
and  to  take  three  wineglassfuls  every  day ;  then  to  warm 
some  of  the  medicine  by  standing  small  bottles  of  it  in 
warm  water,  and  to  use  this  as  a  rectal  and  vaginal  injection 
twice  a  day.  I  consented  to  her  using  the  morphine  hypo- 
dermic injection  for  a  time  until  she  should  be  sufficiently 
recovered  to  do  without  it.  Soon  after  the  treatment  was 
begun  very  much  fermented  matter  began  to  be  discharged, 
which  when  examined  under  the  microscope  proved  to  be 
filled  with  millions  of  micro-organisms.  She  saw  this  for 
herself,  and  at  once  her  confidence  in  all  I  had  told  her  was 
strengthened.  Her  menstruation  always  left  her  extremely 


HOW   TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE.      159 

weak,  and  her  headache  was  at  times  unbearable.  To  re- 
lieve this  I  advised  her  to  wet  a  flannel  in  the  microbe 
killer  and  to  bind  it  around  the  head  till  the  worst  pains 
subsided.  I  explained  to  her  that  the  blood  thickened  by 
microbes  was  impeded  in  its  circulation,  and  that  that 
necessarily  caused  pain,  but  that  as  the  microbes  were  over- 
come and  the  blood  became  purer  those  pains  would  cease. 

During  the  first  three  weeks  she  had  many  very  bad  days, 
but  she  persevered  faithfully  with  the  medicine  as  she  had 
promised  she  would,  using  as  much  of  it  daily  as  she  could 
bear,  and  after  the  three  weeks  she  began  to  feel  easier  and 
to  improve.  The  pains  were  less  severe  and  her  appetite 
became  stronger.  At  the  end  of  two  months,  after  using 
eight  gallons  of  the  medicine,  she  came  to  report  progress. 
At  that  time  her  face  and  body  were  covered  with  red  spots 
or  pimples  the  color  of  scarlet-fever,  but  she  felt  well  and 
took  a  great  deal  of  exercise  around  the  city. 

She  also  mailed  my  circulars  to  all  the  friends  and  ac- 
quaintances she  had  over  this  broad  land. 

I  examined  some  of  the  red  spots  and  put  the  contents  of 
one  of  the  pimples  under  the  microscope — and  what  a  num- 
ber of  little  black  feathery-looking  worms  we  did  see  !  My 
patient  was  wild  with  joy  at  the  thought  that  my  medicine 
would  bring  these  little  things  out,  fof  she  never  had  any 
idea  that  any  such  could  possibly  be  in  her  body.  None  of 
her  doctors  had  ever  told  her  any  thing  of  the  kind,  and  she 
had  no  suspicion  of  them.  By  continuing  the  medicine  the 
spots  gradually  disappeared.  My  patient's  skin  became 
clear  and  smooth,  and  a  few  weeks  later  her  cheek  glowed 
with  color  and  health,  and  she  felt  so  well  that  she  never 
passed  my  office  without  coming  in  to  thank  me  and  to 
shake  my  hand  .and  tell  me  how  she  was  indebted  for  her 
life  to  my  medicine.  She  promised  me,  too,  that  as  long  as 
she  lived  she  would  be  a  worker  for  me  and  would  proclaim 
the  value  of  my  discovery  everywhere. 

Her  cure  was  slow  and  gradual,  but  it  was  steady.  She 
had  no  relapse,  or  any  falling  back  at  any  time.  Yet  it  was 


l6o  MICROBES. 


a  long  process,  and  only  perseverance  and  an  unflinching 
confidence  in  me  sustained  her.  She  lent  a  deaf  ear  to  all 
slander,  paid  no  heed  to  the  jeers  and  false  prophecies  of  the 
doctors,  and  never  believed  that  she  would  be  killed  if  she  did 
not  stop  using  my  medicine.  She  understood  all  that.  She 
knew  that  it  was  nothing  but  the  outpourings  of  jealousy  and 
marks  of  ignorance  and  prejudice.  But  first  of  all  she  knew 
that  the  doctors  who  talked  in  this  way  had  failed  to  cure 
her,  although  every  opportunity  had  been  given  them,  and 
she  was  not  likely  to  place  much  confidence  in  them  when 
they  informed  her  that  I  used  poison,  and  that  if  she  in- 
sisted on  persevering  with  it  the  lining  membrane  of  the 
stomach  would  be  destroyed. 

This  story  was  not  confined  to  her.  Thousands  of  pa- 
tients have  told  me  the  same  thing,  how  the  doctors  assured 
them  that  I  should  kill  them  if  they  followed  my  treatment. 
That  was  the  tale  in  Austin,  where  my  discovery  first  be- 
came known,  and  it  is  the  same  to-day.  But  if  I  had  ever 
killed  anybody,  where  should  I  have  been  to-day  ?  Cer- 
tainly not  in  my  own  house,  writing  this  book.  The  Medi- 
cal Faculty  would  have  been  but  too  glad  to  get  hold  of 
me,  to  have  me  indicted  for  manslaughter,  and  put  me  in  a 
gaol.  The  medical  profession  is  powerful.  They  have 
known  how  to  blindfold  the  people  and  keep  them  in  igno- 
rance of  the  first  principles  of  Nature's  laws  and  operations, 
just  as  the  Salvation  Army  misleads  the  ignorant  and  rules 
its  devotees  with  the  terrors  of  an  alleged  Satan. 

This  lady  whose  case  I  have  given  was  entirely  and  per- 
manently cured  by  the  microbe  killer,  and  she  not  only 
acknowledged  the  cure  to  me,  but  she  gave  me  the  follow- 
ing statement  for  publication,  with  the  request  only  that 
her  name  should  be  withheld,  except  to  those  who  might 
with  sufficient  reason  apply  for  it : 

RADAM'S  MICROBE-KILLER  Co.  : 

The  benefit  received  from  the  use  of  the  microbe  killer  cannot 
be  told  in  stronger  language  than  I  would  use.  I  truly  believe  it  has 
saved  my  life.  I  was  very  much  reduced  in  health  by  long-con- 


HOW   TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE.      l6l 

tinued  and  painful  illness,  was  treated  by  good  physicians  and  spe- 
cialists, but  gradually  grew  worse,  until  I  was  handed  one  of  your 
circulars  and  commenced  at  once  your  medicine.  At  the  com- 
mencement I  was  so  emaciated  and  in  such  fever  I  could  hardly 
walk  across  the  floor.  Indeed,  I  felt  that  my  life  was  of  little  value, 
and  hoped  soon  to  be  relieved  of  my  great  suffering.  I  began 
the  medicine  as  directed  ;  the  fever  soon  left  me,  and  pain  grew 
less,  and  health  gradually  restored,  until  I  felt  like  a  new  person, 
and  in  six  weeks  could  attend  to  business  and  home  affairs.  I 
have  friends  in  San  Francisco  who  knew  how  ill  I  was,  and  of 
my  wonderful  recovery.  I  heartily  recommend  the  Microbe  Kil- 
ler to  the  suffering  who  may  read  this,  as  I  feel  for  humanity, 
and  without  health  life  is  not  worth  much,  but  any  who  take 
this  medicine  for  a  sufficient  length  of  time  for  restoration  I  am 
sure  will  benefit.  This  to  some  might  seem  a  broad  assertion, 
but  I  have  found  it  of  so  much  benefit  to  myself  I  can  speak 
emphatically  of  it  as  one  of  the  best  medicines  in  use.  I  wish 
its  success.  Truly  a  friend  of  humanity, 

I  am  yours, 


Among  my  other  patients  was  a  young  lady  who  as  she 
came  into  my  office  sank  into  a  chair  in  a  state  of  exhaus- 
tion. She  was  pale,  and  any  one  to  look  at  her  would  have 
pronounced  her  near  her  death.  She  brought  with  her  a 
small  quantity  of  fermented  matter  that  had  been  thrown  off 
from  her  stomach  after  taking  medicine  prescribed  by  her 
family  physician.  I  placed  some  on  the  field  of  the  micro- 
scope, and  the  sight  was  so  alarming  that  I  wondered  at  her 
being  alive  at  all.  She  saw  for  herself,  and  I  explained  it  all 
to  her,  and  described  exactly  the  condition  she  was  in.  The 
microscope  displayed  an  enormous  quantity  of  micro-organ- 
isms, in  the  presence  of  which  there  must  have  been  the  great- 
est discomfort  and  sense  of  disease.  But  bad  as  the  exhibit 
was  I  felt  that  the  microbe  killer  would  overcome  it  and  I  en- 
couraged her.  "  You  are  not  seriously  ill,  and  can  be  cured 
without  much  difficulty,"  I  told  her.  "  The  contents  of 
the  stomach  are  in  a  constant  state  of  fermentation.  Even 
the  medicine  you  have  been  taking  promotes  that  process, 


1 62  MICROBES. 


because  it  supplies  food  for  microbes,  without  which  fermen- 
tation cannot  exist.  The  more  you  take  of  it,  therefore,  the 
worse  you  will  get.  As  fermentation  proceeds,  the  matter 
gives  off  gas,  the  coats  of  the  stomach  become  irritable,  and 
the  matter  is  rejected  ;  hence  while  this  lasts  you  never  can 
retain  any  thing  on  the  stomach.  If  you  take  a  quantity  of 
foul  water,  you  cannot  sweeten  it  by  putting  a  little  clean 
water  into  it.  If  you  add  something  that  is  food  for  mi- 
crobes to  matter  that  is  already  fermenting,  you  do  not  stop 
the  ferment,  nor  can  you  stop  it  until  you  put  in  something 
that  destroys  the  micro-organisms.  If  this  is  done  with  the 
stomach  it  will  then  become  clear.  The  fermentation  will 
cease.  Gas  will  no  longer  be  given  off.  The  stomach  will 
cease  to  be  irritable.  It  will  not  throw  off  its  contents,  but 
the  digestive  process  will  go  on  regularly  and  the  patient 
will  be  free  from  pain  and  will  derive  full  benefit  from  food. 
The  blood  will  now  become  enriched.  Impurities  will  be 
excreted.  New  blood  will  be  formed,  and  thus  in  a  short 
time  the  entire  system  will  undergo  a  renovation.  Powerful 
drugs  cannot  be  used  so  as  to  permeate  the  system,  and  such 
harmless  drugs  as  you  have  had  given  to  you  merely  en- 
courage the  growth  of  microbes  and  make  the  disease  worse 
than  before.  Now  take  a  glass  of  my  medicine  and  you  will 
find  that  it  is  not  rejected,  because  it  almost  immediately  de- 
stroys the  microbes  in  the  stomach,  and  so  checks  the  process 
of  fermentation."  I  had  to  use  some  persuasion  at  first,  be-, 
cause  she  objected  to  take  any  thing  more,  and  as  soon  as 
she  tasted  the  microbe  killer  she  raised  further  objections  be- 
cause it  was,  as  she  described  it,  "  sour."  But  I  talked  to  her, 
told  her  that  there  were  no  drugs  in  it,  and  after  some  further 
pressing  I  induced  her  to  drink  a  large  glassful,  after  which 
she  immediately  hurried  home.  The  next  morning  she  was 
back  at  my  office,  but  in  a  very  different  mood.  She  had  had, 
as  she  told  me,  the  first  good  breakfast  in  a  long  time,  and  it 
had  remained  on  her  stomach  without  producing  any  incon- 
venience. I  promised  her  that  she  should  be  perfectly  well 
in  three  weeks  if  she  would  follow  my  instructions.  She  did 


M.  C.   BATTEY. 
Cured,  by  Microbe  Killer. 


HOW  TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND  PRESERVE  LIFE.      163 

so,  and  my  promise  was  kept.  She  was  perfectly  well  in  the 
time  stated,  and,  as  I  told  her,  I  wish  I  never  had  any  more 
difficult  cases  than  hers  to  treat.  Two  gallons  of  the  microbe 
killer  was  what  she  took.  I  mention  the  case  not  as  in  any 
way  singular  but  merely  as  a  fair  sample  of  many  hundreds 
that  have  come  to  me. 

The  case  illustrated  was  of  a  very  different  character.  Mr. 
M.  C.  Battey  was  ticket-agent  at  the  office  of  the  Fort  Spanish 
Railroad  Company,  in  Canal  Street,  New  Orleans,  Louisiana, 
and  he  first  called  upon  me  in  the  month  of  July,  1889.  The 
photograph  taken  at  the  time  gives  but  a  faint  idea  of  his 
condition.  His  body  was  covered  with  ulcers.  I  examined 
him  carefully,  and  found  that  many  of  the  sores  were  from 
one  quarter  to  three  eighths  of  an  inch  deep,  and  some  of 
them  from  one  to  two  inches  in  length.  They  were  sup- 
purating, and  a  discharge  was  constantly  coming  from  them. 
All  the  patient  could  do  was  to  keep  them  dressed  with  cot- 
ton wool  and  bandages,  and  to  remove  the  fermented  matter 
as  fast  as  it  accumulated.  He  had  had  the  best  medical  ad- 
vice that  could  be  procured.  The  most  accomplished  physi- 
cians in  the  city  and  elsewhere  had  seen  him,  but  they  had 
not  been  able  to  afford  him  any  relief.  The  fermentation  ap- 
peared to  become  worse  instead  of  better  under  their  treat- 
ment, and  when  he  came  to  me  he  had  abandoned  all  hope 
of  ever  being  well. 

He  was  very  much  depressed,  and  it  was  with  tears  in  his 
eyes  that  he  told  me  his  sad  story,  describing  his  long  and 
terrible  sufferings,  the  difficulty  he  had  had  to  support  his 
wife  and  children,  the  constant  and  intense  pain  he  had 
undergone,  until  he  felt  that  he  could  endure  it  no  longer, 
and  was  now  only  wishing  for  a  speedy  death.  I  felt  great 
pity  for  the  man,  and  requested  the  company  to  supply  him 
with  the  Microbe  Killer  free  of  charge,  and  endeavor  to 
demonstrate  through  him  what  the  medicine  was  capable  of. 
I  asked  him  only  to  let  me  have  the  photograph.  He  gave  me 
that,  from  which  the  illustration  is  taken.  I  then  promised 
to  have  him  all  right  in  four  or  five  months,  although  up  to 


164  MICROBES. 


that  time  he  was  gradually  wasting  away  from  the  constant 
fermentation,  almost  as  though  he  were  affected  with  leprosy. 
At  the  end  of  the  period  named,  he  sent  a  letter,  which  I 
will  allow  to  speak  for  itself  as  follows : 

NEW  ORLEANS,  November  i,  1889. 
Radam's  Microbe  Killer  Company  : 

I  consider  it  only  your  due  that  I  add  my  testimonial  to  the 
thousands  given  you,  all  breathing  praises  of  the  wonderful  rem- 
edy discovered  by  William  Radam,  and  named  by  him  "  Microbe 
Killer."  To  me  it  has  proven  a  God-sent  gift,  for  to  its  wonder- 
ful effects  I  firmly  believe  I  owe  my  life. 

For  the  past  fifteen  monthsT  have  suffered  all  the  agony  a  man 
could,  covered  with  ulcers  from  thighs  to  neck,  on  front,  back,  and 
sides,  the  result  of  blood  poison,  caused  by  my  own  impru- 
dence. Over  a  year  ago  I  had  an  ulcer  appear  on  my  leg,  big  as 
a  hen-egg.  To  open  it  I  used  a  large-sized  hypodermic  needle, 
laying  the  needle  aside  without  cleaning  it  with  carbolic  acid  or 
other  agent,  as  I  should.  When  a  second  ulcer  came  I  used  the 
same  needle  to  open  it,  and  thus  put  into  my  system  all  the  old 
poison  contained  within  the  needle.  The  effects  were  terrible 
indeed.  Malignant  ulcers  began  to  come,  often  ten  at  a  time, 
on  all  parts  of  my  body.  They  caused  the  most  intense  suffer- 
ing, day  and  night.  Poisonous  pus  constantly  exuded.  They 
would  not  heal,  although  I  used  every  agent  known.  I  began  to 
lose  flesh  rapidly,  my  weight  being  reduced  from  one  hundred 
and  seventy  to  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  pounds.  I  had  no 
appetite,  no  ambition,  no  strength.  I  gave  every  medicine  adver- 
tised, as  well  as  various  physicians'  prescriptions,  a  thorough  trial, 
and  got  rapidly  worse  instead  of  better.  I  gave  up  all  hope  of 
being  cured,  and  neither  my  family,  friends,  nor  myself  believed  I 
could  possibly  live  to  see  this  year  out.  Finally,  owing  to  the 
persuasions  of  Mr.  Meyers,  of  the  Picayune,  I  consented  to  try  the 
Microbe  Killer  as  a  last  resort,  and  I  frankly  confess  I  had  no 
faith  in  it,  as  I  had  used  S.  S.  S.  and  B.  B.  B.  and  P.  P.  P.,  five 
bottles  of  each,  and  received  no  relief,  and  I  believed  there  was 
no  cure  for  me.  But  I  determined  to  give  your  remedy  a  fair 
trial,  and  I  thank  God  I  did.  I  determined  to  use  heroic  treat- 
ment, and  not  follow  directions,  so  I  began  on  your  strongest 


MICROBES   FKOM   ULCER.     (M.  C.  BATTEYj 


HOW  TO   CURE  DISEASE  AND   PRESERVE  LIFE.      165 

preparation,  No.  3,  .and  drank  it  freely  as  water,  eight  or  nine 
times  a  day,  using  a  jug,  or  gallon,  every  five  or  six  days  ;  at  the 
same  time  I  used  the  remedy  as  a  wash,  bathing  the  ulcers  night 
and  morning,  forcing  the  liquid  into  the  sores  with  a  sponge.  I 
soon  found  the  benefit  of  such  treatment,  for  the  ulcers  at  once 
ceased  to  come  ;  they  began  to  discharge  a  healthy  pus,  my  ap- 
petite returned,  I  slept  well  (as  all  soreness  had  gone  from  my 
body),  the  color  came  back  to  my  face,-body,  and  hands,  my  flesh 
returned,  until  now  I  weigh  one  hundred  and  sixty  pounds  ;  my 
family  regained  lost  hopes,  my  friends  congratulated  me  on 
my  improved  appearance,  and  I  said  good-by  to  disease. 

I  have  used  seven  gallons,  and  do  not  propose  to  quit  until  I 
am  perfectly  cured,  although  I  believe  I  am  now,  yet  I  do  not 
propose  to  give  the  microbes  a  chance  to  multiply  yet  awhile.  I 
give  you  permission  to  show  the  photograph  I  enclose.  It  was 
taken  when  I  commenced  to  use  your  remedy.  If  I  had  one  of 
my  present  appearance  it  would  show  the  gain  which  has  been 
effected  ;  but  it  might  mislead  the  unthinking,  as  although  the 
sores  are  healed  up  the  scars  remain,  and  many  of  them  I  will 
carry  to  the  grave.  But  to  all  and  every  one  I  truthfully  say  that 
I  owe  my  cure  and  my  life  only  and  solely  to  the  unstinted  use 
of  the  Microbe  Killer,  and  so  long  as  I  live  I  shall  use  no  other 
medicine  for  the  cure  of  any  disease,  for  I  firmly  believe  with  Mr. 
Radam,  that  microbes  are  the  cause  of  every  disease,  and  I  also 
believe  his  remedy  is  the  only  cure  there  is  in  the  world. 

I  have  had  the  worst  case  of  blood  poisoning  I  ever  saw,  and  I 
believe  my  case  is  the  only  one  which  has  ever  been  cured.  You 
can  find  a  score  of  men  who  can  vouch  for  the  facts  I  have  given. 
Nearly  every  one  of  them  has  seen  my  body  in  its  worst  condition, 
and  all  will  testify  that  only  Microbe  Killer  has  cured  me. 

Yours  truly, 

M.  C.  BATTEY, 

709  Burgundy  Street. 


CHAPTER   XL 

CURABILITY   OF  TUBERCLE  AND   CONSUMPTION. 

PEOPLE  are  constantly  deceiving  themselves  and  often 
letting  others  deceive  them-  about  their  ailments,  and  they 
think  they  have  organic  disease  when  there  is  only  some 
local  weakness  or  derangement. 

The  stomach  is  the  source  of  very  many  troubles,  of 
more  than  people  generally  have  any  idea  of.  Frequently  a 
patient  will  come,  asking  to  be  thoroughly  examined,  be- 
cause confident  of  the  existence  of  heart-disease.  He  has 
an  irregular  pulse,  palpitation,  pain  over  the  region  of  the 
organ,  and  probably  much  nervous  irritability.  His  chest 
is  examined,  but  it  is  hard  to  convince  him  that  his  heart  is 
perfectly  healthy.  He  insists  that  he  knows  his  own  feel- 
ings best,  and  that  they  tell  him  differently,  and  he  pre- 
fers to  believe  them.  If  the  doctor  says  he  is  mistaken  and 
tells  him  that  the  stomach  is  the  source  of  trouble,  he  is 
probably  dissatisfied  and  seeks  another  physician.  Any 
doctor  who  is  regardless  enough  of  the  truth  to  gratify  him 
by  telling  him  he  is  right,  and  that  his  heart  is  in  such  a 
terrible  condition  that  death  may  come  at  any  moment, 
will  have  his  confidence.  If  such  doctor  treats  him  for 
heart-disease  he  will  fail,  but  if  he  attacks  the  stomach  the 
patient  will  get  well  and  will  give  the  doctor  credit  for  hav- 
ing cured  his  heart,  while  the  more  honest  man  who  told 
him  the  truth  will  be  set  down  as  a  person  ignorant  of  his 
profession.  What  people  think  is  palpitation  of  the  heart 
is  in  reality  nothing  more  than  a  symptom  of  disorder  of 

166 


CURABILITY  OF  TUBERCLE  AND   CONSUMPTION.      1 67 

the  stomach,  which  in  this  country  is  more  prevalent  than 
in  any  other.  But  why  it  should  be  so  prevalent  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  climate.  It  is  a  result  of  the  way  in  which 
people  live  and  of  their  disregard  for  the  ordinary  rules 
of  diet  and  hygiene.  Hot  bread,  iced  water,  insufficient 
exercise,  fast  eating,  too  common  use  of  whiskey,  are  all 
conducive  to  indigestion. 

We  read  a  great  deal  in  political  speeches  in  America 
of  pauperism  in  Europe,  although  very  few  of  the  writers 
and  speakers  who  use  the  word  know  what  it  means.  But 
the  people  there,  even  the  poor  among  them,  live  better 
than  we  do.  They  dine,  they  are  not  content  to  feed. 
They  are  more  regular  in  their  habits.  Their  food  is  more 
wholesome ;  and  so  where  a  hundred  persons  are  suffering 
from  dyspepsia  here,  often  in  its  worst  form,  there  would 
scarcely  be  found  one  affected  with  it  even  mildly  there ; 
and  yet  there  is  a  great  reluctance  to  attribute  the  evils  of 
it  to  their  true  cause.  Before  I  ever  sold  a  gallon  of 
microbe  killer  I  experimented  with  it  on  myself,  to  see  how 
it  acted  on  an  overloaded  stomach.  I  took  a  hearty  meal 
of  meats  and  vegetables,  including  cucumbers  and  peas. 
Fermentation  took  place,  gaseous  matter  was  formed,  and 
a  sensation  of  swelling  and  bloating  produced  with  severe 
pain.  I  drank  one  or  two  large  glasses  of  the  microbe 
killer,  and  all  pain  ceased  in  from  five  to  ten  minutes.  This 
satisfied  me  that  the  superfluous  fermentation  was  de- 
stroyed. Some  kinds  of  food,  especially  some  kinds  of 
fruit  and  vegetables,  ferment  much  more  readily  than 
others,  and  again,  there  is  a  difference  in  the  degree  of 
fermentation  of  different  things.  Overripe  fruit  ferments 
very  readily,  in  fact  it  is  already  in  a  state  of  fermentation 
when  eaten,  and  diarrhoea  is  the  result,  the  microbes  passing 
into  the  intestines.  Unripe  fruit  is  not  readily  digested. 
It  is  apt  to  remain  in  the  stomach  too  long,  and  thus  when 
fermentation  ensues,  colic,  pain,  and  diarrhoea,  again  result. 

Persons  suffering  from  indigestion  have  a  weakened  stom- 
ach. The  lining  membranes,  where  the  trouble  is  of  long 


1 68  MICROBES. 


standing,  are  broken  down.  There  is  no  tone  in  them. 
They  have  been  weakened  by  neglect  of  Nature's  laws  in 
the  first  instance,  and  their  digestion  being  impaired  over- 
fermentation  has  set  in  habitually,  and  thus  no  medicine 
can  be  of  any  use  which  does  not  check  that  by  destroying 
the  microbe  that  produces  it. 

But  that  is  not  all.  Impaired  action  of  the  stomach  and 
digestive  organs  causes  a  mal-assimilation  of  the  food, 
consequently  an  impairment  of  the  blood,  so  that  while  the 
microbe  killer  will  produce  a  prompt  effect  by  direct  action 
on  the  stomach  and  its  contents,  it  must  be  persevered  with 
to  purify  and  strengthen  the  blood  and  restore  the  whole 
system  to  a  healthy  condition.  When  the  disease  is  of  long 
standing,  as  it  always  is,  for  dyspepsia  begins  before  the 
patient  knows  what  is  the  matter  with  him,  time  is  also 
required  to  bring  the  membranes  of  that  organ  back  to  a 
proper  form.  Nourishment  is  also  necessary  to  strengthen 
the  blood,  and  this  cannot  be  effected  until  the  stomach  is 
restored.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  when  so  much  is 
required,  time  must  be  taken.  Perseverance  in  the  use  of 
the  remedy  is  essential,  although,  where  that  is  used  there 
need  be  no  fear  about  the  result.  A  cure  is  certain. 

It  is  useless  to  give  artificial  drugs  like  iron,  and  it  would 
not  be  done  but  through  mistaken  ideas.  It  is  useless  to 
spread  manure  over  a  field  of  corn  unless  the  weeds  are  re- 
moved ;  for  they  will  use  up  the  fertilizer,  and  growing 
more  luxuriantly  than  before  they  will  choke  out  the  crop ; 
in  other  words,  so  long  as  the  microbe  remains  on  the  stom- 
ach it  is  useless  to  put  in  food  or  drugs,  because  the  fer- 
mentation still  goes  on,  probably  even  in  an  exaggerated 
form,  thus  leaving  the  patient  in  a  worse  condition  than  he 
was  before  and  the  system  weaker.  It  is  a  false  policy, 
resulting  from  ignorance,  which  gives  iron  to  recover  the 
coloring  matter  of  the  blood  when  a  person  looks  pale  and 
anaemic.  Iron  will  not  make  blood.  It  cannot  do  it.  First 
purify  the  stomach,  then  let  the  patient  eat  any  thing  that 
is  nutritious  and  agreeable  to  the  taste.  The  stomach  then 


CURABILITY  OF  TUBERCLE  AND   CONSUMPTION.      169 

can  digest  it,  the  food  is  assimilated,  and  the  entire  body  be- 
comes improved  in  tone.  This  is  effecting  a  cure  in  Nature's 
own  way,  and  it  is  not  only  preferable  to  artificial  methods, 
but  it  is  the  only  way  in  which  a  cure  can  be  permanent 
and  complete. 

Upon  this  principle,  consumption  if  taken  in  time  becomes 
curable.  The  microbe  of  the  disease  is  very  common.  It 
was  discovered  in  1882  by  Koch  of  Berlin.  They  are  read- 
ily found  in  the  bodies  and  in  the  sputa  of  persons  suffering 
from  phthisis,  and  when  inoculated  into  other  animals  they 
reproduce  tuberculosis.  Consumption  then  is  a  contagious 
disease  and  may  be  conveyed  from  one  person  to  another. 
It  has  not  been  popularly  regarded  so,  but  there  is  no  doubt 
of  the  truth  of  it,  the  only  difference  between  the  contagion 
of  phthisis  and  of  such  a  disease  as  small-pox  being  in  the  less 
power  of  the  microbes,  except  in  larger  quantities,  to  convey 
the  disease. 

Laws  existed  in  Italy  as  long  ago  as  the  last  century  in 
which  pulmonary  consumption  was  treated  as  contagious. 
Physicians  were  required  to  report  every  case  that  came 
under  their  notice,  and  a  heavy  penalty  was  imposed  for 
neglecting  to  do  so ;  a  second  offense  involved  expatriation 
for  a  long  term  of  years,  so  important  was  the  precaution 
considered.  Under  the  law  isolation  was  practised.  Poor 
persons  suffering  from  consumption  were  removed  to  a  hos- 
pital, and  after  the  death  of  a  patient  in  a  private  house,  the 
bedding  and  clothes  that  had  been  used  were  destroyed,  and 
after  fumigation  the  house  itself  was  made  to  undergo 
complete  renovation.  The  law  was  not  successful  in  abat- 
ing the  disease,  chiefly  perhaps  for  the  reason  that  persons 
suffer  from  it  long  before  they  are  aware  of  it,  certainly 
before  it  is  necessary  for  them  to  lay  aside  their  usual  avo- 
cation, and  hence  the  isolation  comes  too  late.  It  is  very 
doubtful  whether  the  laws  prevalent  here  which  apply 
similarly  to  other  diseases  of  an  infectious  or  contagious 
character  possess  advantages  sufficient  to  counterbalance  the 
evils  attending  them.  Too  little  regard  is  paid  to  the  rights 


I/O  MICROBES. 


of  individuals,  and  in  consequence,  coupled  with  the  igno- 
rance and  impulsive  nature  of  our  legislators,  laws  are  placed 
upon  the  statute-book  which  look  very  well  in  theory  but 
which  are  in  reality  inhuman  and  practically  of  no  value. 

The  isolation  of  consumptive  patients  would  be  a  per- 
fectly gratuitous  and  useless  cruelty.  It  could  never  be 
made  effectual.  If  every  one  suffering  from  tubercle  were 
to  be  taken  away,  the  streets  would  be  denuded  of  a  large 
proportion  of  the  population,  and  persons  following  an 
active  business  or  professional  life  would  become  wards  of 
the  State,  living  apart  from  their  fellow-men.  There  is  no 
danger  in  the  moist  sputa,  of  phthisical  patients.  It  is 
only  when  the  sputa  are  allowed  to  dry  that  the  microbes 
get  into  the  air  and  become  dangerous.  The  filthy  habit  of 
expectoration,  peculiar  to  Americans,  is  thus  a  public  evil, 
and  to  guard  as  far  as  possible  against  its  consequences  the 
mats  and  floors  of  street  cars  and  the  carpets,  rugs,  and 
floors  of  public  halls  and  buildings  cannot  be  too  constantly 
or  too  carefully  cleaned.  In  the  same  way  there  is  danger  in 
hotels.  The  same  rooms  are  occupied  by  different  people  to 
a  degree  that  possibly  hundreds  live  for  a  time  in  the  same 
apartments  in  the  space  of  a  year,  and  the  cleansing  that 
such  places  receive  is  wholly  inadequate.  Rooms  occupied 
by  transient  visitors  at  hotels  and  boarding-houses  would  be 
more  healthy  if  the  floors  were  left  uncarpeted,  and  if  all 
curtains  and  hangings  were  excluded. 

One  inference  which  the  reader  will  deduce  from  these 
remarks  is  that  consumptive  patients  take  considerable  risk, 
and  involve  others  too  in  risk,  when  they  go  to  summer 
resorts,  and  the  inference  would  be  correct.  In  such  places 
due  precautions  are  not  taken.  A  person  affected  even 
mildly  with  tuberculosis  occupying  rooms  at  a  summer 
resort  which  had  been  previously  used  by  another  similarly 
diseased  would  be  very  likely  to  intensify  his  trouble.  The 
only  suitable  places  for  such  persons  are  sanitaria,  of  which 
there  are  now  plenty  in  the  country,  where  proper  precau- 
tions are  taken  and  all  risk  is  guarded  against. 


TUBERCLES— CLEAN  CULTURE.     (BERLIN.) 


TUBERCLE-CAVITY.     (PARIS.) 


CURABILITY  OF  TUBERCLE  AND   CONSUMPTION.      I /I 

Florida  is  proverbially  dangerous  to  consumptive  patients, 
but  that  is  not  due  especially  to  this  cause.  Some  hotels  in 
that  State  are  built  suitably  to  the  climate,  and  contain 
lofty  and  well  ventilated  rooms,  which  have  at  least  the 
appearance  of  being  adapted  to  sick  persons.  It  is  a  well- 
known  fact,  nevertheless,  that  phthisical  patients  do  not 
obtain  relief  from  a  visit  to  the  "  Land  of  Flowers."  On  the 
contrary,  a  fatal  result  is  far  more  likely  to  be  hastened  by 
it.  Persons  suffering  merely  from  throat  affections  may 
obtain  relief,  though  not  as  they  would  in  Bermuda,  but 
tuberculosis  is  rendered  worse.  The  extremely  moist  and 
warm  as  well  as  variable  climate  of  Florida  is  particularly 
well  adapted  to  the  growth  of  the  tubercle  microbe,  and  if  a 
consumptive  patient  retain  strength  to  enable  him  to  escape 
it,  he  will  almost  certainly  suffer  from  its  influence  on  re- 
turning north.  Florida  should  be  avoided  by  everybody 
who  has  a  tendency  or  predisposition  to  tubercular  disease. 

Not  long  ago  the  French  Academy  of  Medicine  appointed 
a  commission  to  investigate  the  disease,  and  they  formulated 
the  cases  most  liable  to  contract  it  into  three  divisions  : 

1st.  Persons  born  of  tuberculous  parents  or  from  persons 
belonging  to  families  which  include  many  members  affected 
with  tuberculosis. 

2d.  Those  who  are  weakened  by  privations  and  excesses ; 
the  abuse  of  alcoholic  drink  is  particularly  injurious. 

3d.  Persons  suffering  or  convalescent  from  measles, 
whooping-cough,  and  small-pox  are  likewise  predisposed  to 
tuberculosis.  Diabetic  patients  are  especially  predisposed. 

It  was  calculated  by  that  commission  that  about  twenty- 
five  per  cent,  of  the  total  number  of  deaths  in  Paris  arise 
from  some  forms  of  disease  where  the  tubercle  microbe  is 
found.  It  is  a  popular  error  to  suppose  that  consumption 
is  the  only  form  in  which  it  exhibits  itself.  Many  diseases 
are  due  to  it,  not  only  scrofula,  abscesses,  ulcers,  tumors,  and 
diseases  of  the  bones  and  joints,  but  others  frequently 
regarded  as  inflammatory  only,  such  as  peritonitis,  bronchi- 
tis, pleurisy,  meningitis,  enteritis,  and  catarrh. 


172  MICROBES. 


Any  accurate  estimate  of  the  percentage  of  deaths  in 
this  country  is  impossible  by  reason  of  the  great  inaccuracy 
of  the  census.  The  stated  population  is  greatly  exagger- 
ated. This  results  partly  from  carelessness  and  partly  from 
the  clumsy  way  in  which  the  returns  are  made.  It  is  also 
done  for  political  reasons.  In  the  year  of  the  last  census, 
756,893  deaths  were  reported.  We  do  not  know  how  many 
were  not  reported.  But  of  those,  91,270  were  caused  by 
consumption,  while  if  we  could  learn  accurately  the  number 
in  which  the  microbe  of  tubercle  alone  was  involved,  the 
number  would  probably  rise  to  nearly  one  half  of  the  total. 

I  have  before  me  some  returns  only  now  completed  which 
go  to  show  that  the  deaths  by  consumption  in  New  York 
are  3.5  per  thousand  of  the  population.  In  some  wards  of 
the  city  it  is  set  as  high  as  9.71.  It  is  more  than  probable 
that  the  truth  lies  nearer  double  these  figures.  The  popu- 
lation of  New  York  was  given  by  the  last  census  as  1,206,- 
299  and  it  is  estimated  now  at  1,800,000.  The  first  number 
is  too  high  by  probably  two  hundred  thousand,  and  the 
estimate  is  in  excess  by  probably  from  four  to  five  hundred 
thousand.  Apart  from  the  constant  effort  to  make  the 
population  appear  higher  than  it  is,  a  large  number  of 
persons  get  their  names  on  the  census  who  do  business  in 
the  city  but  are  residents  outside  of  the  limits,  Staten 
Island  or  Long  Island  or  in  New  Jersey.  Consequently 
statistics  are  of  very  little  value,  and  it  is  more  than  likely 
that  if  accurate  figures  could  be  obtained,  it  would  show 
mortality  rates  to  be  not  less  than  26  to  30  per  thousand, 
sometimes  higher,  of  which  about  one  half  are  influenced, 
if  not  directly  caused,  by  tubercle  diseases.  The  number  of 
deaths  recorded  last  year  was  39,583. 

The  prevalence  of  the  tubercle  microbe,  the  bacillus  of 
Koch,  is  only  what  might  be  expected  when  we  remember 
that  it  exists  in  meat,  milk,  and  many  articles  of  food,  that 
it  can  reach  us  through  the  lungs  and  skin,  and  be  trans- 
mitted readily  from  one  person  to  another;  then  again, 
that  it  may  remain  in  the  system  long  before  its  effects  are 


CURABILITY  OF  TUBERCLE  AND   CONSUMPTION.      173 

marked  by  any  indication  of  disease.  Knowing  this,  the 
necessity  for  adopting  means  to  prevent  its  action  becomes 
more  imperative,  as  well  as  are  the  precautions  requisite  to 
prevent  its  being  taken  into  the  system.  Physicians  allow 
that  their  treatment  of  tubercle  has  of  late  years  undergone 
a  great  change,  arising  entirely  out  of  the  discovery  that  it 
is  a  microbe  disease.  When  they  are  forced  to  acknowl- 
edge, as  they  will  be,  that  all  are  microbe  diseases,  their 
treatment  will  perhaps  undergo  still  further  change. 

A  quaint  acknowledgment  has  been  made  by  Professor 
Sommerbrodt,  which  I  shall  notice  more  fully  elsewhere. 
He  has  great  faith  in  creasote  as  a  curative  agent,  and 
especially  as  an  antiseptic,  and  when  the  bacillus  of  tubercle 
was  discovered  he  thought  it  would  be  an  excellent  medium 
for  killing  it.  Using  it  tentatively  he  found  that  his  con- 
sumptive patients  derived  some  benefit  from  it.  It  hap- 
pened about  that  time  Dr.  Guttman  was  also  experimenting 
and  testing  it  on  the  cultured  bacilli  in  his  laboratory. 
These  experiments  led  him  to  the  calculation  that  before 
the  microbes  could  be  destroyed  about  one  third  of  a  drachm 
of  the  fluid  must  be  introduced  into  the  circulation,  and  he 
concluded  that  although  the  bacilli  would  be  killed  the 
patient  would  also  assuredly  perish  from  the  poison.  One 
drop  of  creasote  is  a  dose.  Notwithstanding  this,  Dr. 
Sommerbrodt  persisted  in  his  fancy,  and  has  capsules  made 
containing  creasote  for  persons  suffering  from  tubercular 
disease,  content  to  take  his  chances  whether  the  microbes 
or  the  patient  die  first. 

It  is  popularly  supposed  that  tubercle  is  more  common  in 
towns  than  in  the  country.  Careful  observation  shows  this 
to  be  an  error,  and  the  explanation  is  not  very  clear.  The 
tubercle  microbe  is  not,  like  that  of  typhoid  or  diphtheria, 
dependent  upon  inefficient  drainage  or  corrupt  air,  and 
possibly  the  large  use  of  milk  in  the  country  may  have 
something  to  do  with  it.  But  that  is  only  a  suggestion. 
Further  investigations,  however,  are  required.  The  statis- 
tics which  led  to  the  above  conclusion  were  obtained  from 


1 74  MICROBES. 


France  and  Germany.  None,  so  far  as  I  know,  have  been 
prepared  in  America,  and  if  they  had,  they  would  for  the 
reasons  before  specified  hardly  be  trustworthy. 

Patt  de  foie  gras,  although  esteemed  a  delicacy,  is,  as  is 
well  known,  produced  by  disease,  but  it  is  not  as  well 
understood  as  it  should  be,  that  this  liver  is  little  else  than  a 
culture  of  tubercle  germs.  In  this  we  have  an  instance 
therefore,  not  only  where  microbes  become  an  article  of 
food,  but  where  they  are  largely  esteemed  and  sold  at  a 
high  price.  Nevertheless  the  pate"  de  foie  gras  should  be 
abolished. 

Tubercle  bacilli  are  very  frequent  in  poultry,  and,  again, 
dentists  tell  us  that  where  persons  are  predisposed,  they 
may  produce  serious  results  through  decayed  teeth.  To 
lessen  the  danger  the  brush  should  be  kept  in  requisition 
and  used  two  or  three  times  a  day,  and  with  it  a  safe  anti- 
septic wash,  which,  like  my  microbe  killer,  destroys  all 
germs. 

In  France  it  is  not  as  usual  as  it  is  with  us  to  use  milk 
unboiled,  yet  in  Paris  there  are  about  two  thousand  deaths 
of  children  every  year,  caused  by  tuberculous  disease 
brought  on  by  impure  food.  No  meat  or  animal  food  of 
any  kind  may  be  eaten  with  perfect  safety  unless  the  inner 
portions  are  as  well  cooked  as  the  exterior.  Milk  is,  how- 
ever, always  a  large  item  in  the  nourishment  of  children, 
and  Dr.  Ernst,  of  Harvard,  has  shown  that  in  a  large  num- 
ber of  samples  very  many  were  found  to  contain  tubercle 
bacilli  in  great  quantities.  Such  milk  is  highly  dangerous 
and  should  not  be  used  until  it  shall  have  been  allowed  to 
boil  for  at  least  ten  minutes. 

Milk  already  sterilized  may  be  purchased,  and  if  prepared 
by  a  substantial  manufacturer,  it  is  generally  all  that  one 
could  wish.  In  the  works  of  a  well-known  maker  in  this 
city  the  following  is  the  nature  of  the  process,  and  the 
utmost  care  is  used  to  insure  its  success  :  The  milk  is  taken 
into  a  pan  capable  of  holding  a  thousand  gallons.  Then  it 
is  mixed  with  a  fresh  extract  of  the  pancreatic  fluid  at  a 


CURABILITY  OF  TUBERCLE  AND   CONSUMPTION.      175 

temperature  of  105°  Fahrenheit.  It  is  then  drawn  into  a 
vacuum-pan  at  a  low  temperature  and  gradually  raised  to  a 
high  one,  the  milk  being  partially  concentrated  at  the  same 
time.  Milk  sugar  is  now  added  and  the  evaporation  is  con- 
tinued until  the  contents  of  the  pan  are  nearly  dry.  They 
are  then  taken  into  a  room  where  presence  of  all  germs  has 
been  removed  by  filtering  the  air  contained  in  it  through  a 
thick  bulk  of  cotton-wool.  It  is  there  ground,  bottled,  and 
packed  in  hermetically  sealed  cans,  which  have  in  their  turn 
been  also  sterilized  and  purified  from  all  microbes.  Nothing 
short  of  a  process  of  this  kind,  conducted  with  the  utmost 
caution,  will  suffice  to  render  milk  absolutely  free  from  dis- 
ease germs,  unless  it  be  a  long  process  of  boiling  immediately 
before  being  used. 

The  bacillus  being  conveyed  from  the  sputa  of  diseased 
persons,  the  habit  of  expectorating  in  public  places  cannot 
be  too  strongly  condemned,  and  care  should  always  be 
taken  to  empty  spittoons  so  that  their  contents  shall  be 
thoroughly  destroyed.  If  thrown  upon  the  soil  the  disease- 
germ  may  be  conveyed  to  chickens  or  domestic  animals, 
and  so  be  returned  to  the  human  family.  Young  children, 
and  anybody  with  any  predisposition  to  tuberculous  disease, 
should  never  sleep  in  rooms  with  persons  suffering  from  it, 
and  thorough  disinfection,  with  high-pressure  steam  if  possi- 
ble, should  be  carefully  followed.  In  buildings  such  as 
hotels  and  boarding-houses,  attention  should  be  given  to 
this,  and  rooms  should  be  furnished  with  it  in  view.  The 
practice  of  using  fixed  carpets  and  much  upholstery  is  bad. 
Tuberculous  people  may  have  occupied  apartments  for 
weeks  or  months.  They  leave  and  others  occupy  their 
rooms  and  at  once  incur  all  the  risk  of  infection.  In  such 
places,  floors  should  be  painted  or  stained  and  rugs  or  "art 
squares  "  used  for  carpets.  Curtains,  lambrequins,  and  such 
like  things  should  be  dispensed  with.  If  the  floor  must  be 
covered,  linoleum  or  oil  cloth  are  the  best  materials  to  use, 
and  the  former  is  the  warmer.  Rugs  may  be  used  over 
either.  Railroad  sleeping-cars  are  among  the  most  likely 


1/6  MICROBES. 


places  to  incur  infection  ;  no  sufficient  care  is  taken  to  pre- 
vent it,  and  it  is  more  than  likely  that  many  persons  have 
suffered  in  consequence.  The  method  of  cleansing  and 
airing  the  sleeping  berths  on  railroads  is  most  imperfect  and 
reprehensible.  A  show  of  diligence  in  this  direction  is  of 
necessity  made  when  the  berths  are  closed  for  the  day,  but 
it  is  only  a  show.  Strictly  each  berth  should  be  thoroughly 
ventilated,  and  every  precaution  should  be  used  about  it  so 
that  no  microbe  or  disease-germ  can  possibly  be  left  behind. 
This  has  probably  never  yet  been  done. 

Physicians  have  looked  in  all  directions  except  the  right 
for  a  cure  for  consumption,  and  among  them  is  one  that  has 
been  followed,  especially  in  France  and  Germany, — of  inhal- 
ing hot  air.  This  is  based  on  the  fact  that  heat  kills  the 
microbe,  but  it  has  been  found  in  practice  that  the  air  must 
be  of  a  temperature  of  about  three  hundred  degrees,  or 
eighty-eight  degrees  hotter  than  boiling  water,  and  even 
then  it  is  not  to  be  depended  on.  I  have  prepared  a  list  of 
some  at  least  of  the  remedies  that  have  from  time  to  time 
been  proposed  for  consumption  and  tubercular  diseases,  all 
produced,  as  even  the  doctors  now  admit,  by  that  little 
microbe  discovered  by  Koch.  That  list,  which  is  too  long 
for  full  quotation,  comprises  alcohol,  quinine,  salicylic 
acid,  antipyrine,  arsenic,  pilocarpine,  morphia  and  opium 
and  their  compounds,  oxygen,  corrosive  sublimate,  iron, 
digitalis,  atropine,  chloral,  iodine,  glycerine,  the  hypo- 
phosphites,  potassium  iodide,  cod-liver  oil,  chloroform, 
benzoin,  cocaine,  bromides,  picrotoxin,  terpin  hydrate, 
creasote,  agaricin,  iodoform,  phosphorus,  sclerotic  acid, 
etc.,  etc.  From  the  number  and  varied  character  of  these 
alleged  remedies,  the  majority  of  which  are  powerful  poisons, 
it  may  be  judged  that  medical  science  has  not  been  very 
successful  in  finding  the  means  of  treating  tuberculous 
diseases  ; — and  the  popular  belief  that  consumption  is  among 
the  most  fatal  and  incurable  has  been  justified.  Neverthe- 
less experience  now  tells  us  that,  as  I  have  said  above,  it 
may  be  cured  if  treated  in  time  and  upon  proper  principles. 


"M 


'\ 


NEPHRITIS. 


NEPHRITIS. 


I 

CURABILITY  OF  TUBERCLE  AND   CONSUMPTION.      177 

When  lungs  are  already  destroyed  it  is  too  late  to  hope  for 
their  restoration,  although  even  then  relief  may  be  afforded. 
But  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the  disease,  now  that  the  cause 
is  known,  it  is  certainly  possible  to  remove  every  trace  of 
the  trouble  and  to  bring  back  the  patient  to  a  state  of  sound 
health.  My  discovery  has  done  this  and  will  do  it  again  if 
taken  properly  and  persevered  with.  Inhalation  is  in  such 
cases  very  valuable. 

Gradually  physicians  are  recognizing  the  truth  that  more 
and  more  diseases  must  be  attributed  to  the  presence  of 
microbes,  and  as  they  do  so  their  mode  of  treatment  will 
become  simplified.  But  even  then  their  ordinary  Materia 
Medica  will  not  suffice,  and  they  will  be  forced  to  the  adop- 
tion of  my  medicine,  which  alone  of  all  others  may  be  taken 
in  sufficient  quantity  to  destroy  microbes  without  injury  to 
the  patient.  A  French  physician  has  quite  recently  shown 
that  baldness  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  presence  of  a  microbe 
which  he  has  detected  and  named,  and  which,  he  says, 
attacks  the  follicles  and  destroys  the  hair  at  the  roots.  By 
degrees,  perhaps,  medical  science  will  accept  my  teaching, 
and  admit  that  all  diseases  are  due  to  the  same  cause  ;  and 
meanwhile,  what  must  strike  every  reasoning  man  is  the 
fact  that,  even  where  the  doctors  admit  that  microbes  are 
the  exciting  cause,  they  nevertheless  look  about  for  differ- 
ent means  by  which  to  get  rid  of  them  ;  whereas  my  expe- 
rience has  shown  beyond  question  that  one  agent  is  quite 
capable  of  destroying  all  forms  of  disease  germs,  some  only 
requiring  a  longer  time  than  others. 

Every  thing  in  this  world  operates  by  laws  which  nature 
herself  lays  down,  as  any  one  can  see  who  will  take  the 
trouble  to  look  into  it.  But  people  are  apt  to  believe  what 
they  are  told  without  exercising  their  own  judgment  and 
reason.  Just  as  when  I  was  a  boy,  I  accepted  every  thing 
which  I  heard  or  read  without  questioning  its  truth,  and  it 
was  not  till  I  grew  older,  and  exercising  common-sense,  I 
began  to  inquire  for  myself  that  I  realized  how  much  of 
error  there  was  in  every-day  teachings.  Now  I  have  come 

12 


1/8  MICROBES. 


to  wonder  how  people  are  so  misled,  and  how  hard  it  is  to 
make  them  see  through  the  simplest  things,  although  medi- 
cal science  is  ever  doing  its  best  to  keep  them  in  ignorance. 
The  truth  is,  that  too  many  people  like  to  let  other  people 
do  their  thinking.  They  are  too  indolent  or  too  indifferent 
to  do  it  for  themselves.  Again,  to  many  the  idea  never 
occurs.  They  take  whatever  is  offered  to  them  without 
asking  the  whys  and  the  wherefores,  or  even  suggesting 
whether  the  thing  is  as  represented,  much  as  a  child  sees 
the  sun  rise  and  set,  and  night  follow  day,  without  ever 
asking  itself  the  cause.  Perhaps  when  we  remember  how 
much  people  are  engrossed  .with  their  own  business  affairs 
we  may  find  some  excuse  for  them  when  they  receive  every 
thing  with  too  much  faith  ;  the  wonder  rather  is  that  they 
are  so  reluctant  to  accept  the  truth  when  it  is  put  under 
their  eyes. 

The  public  likes  to  be  humbugged.  The  various  medical 
companies  and  agencies  that  live  by  advertising  and  offering 
certain  cures  depend  entirely  on  the  gullibility  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  money  in  large  amounts  testifies  to  the  extent  to 
which  that  weakness  prevails.  There  are  many  instances 
where  in  the  country  farmers  and  business  men  have  bor- 
rowed money  and  crippled  themselves  financially  to  procure 
a  worthless  nostrum,  to  which  they  were  led  by  some  shrewd 
advertiser. 

This  city  of  New  York  abounds  with  men  who  live  entirely, 
and  live  well,  on  the  money  they  squeeze  out  of  the  pockets 
of  individuals  who  are  silly  enough  to  trust  them.  These 
victims  are  ready  enough  to  believe  promises  if  they  are 
well  worded,  even  if,  by  the  exercise  of  a  little  common- 
sense,  they  might  know  them  to  be  deceptive  ;  but  put 
actual  facts  before  those  same  persons,  and  they  are  too 
obtuse  to  understand. 

It  must  be  the  perversity  of  human  nature  ;  hence  know- 
ing this,  I  am  the  more  anxious  to  prove  all  my  assertions, 
to  take  the  reader  fully  into  my  confidence,  and  to  explain 
every  thing  so  that  the  most  unwilling  comprehension  can- 


CURABILITY  OF  TUBERCLE  AND   CONSUMPTION.      179 

not  fail  to  understand,  and  the  most  skeptical  must  believe. 
People  who  have  been  deceived  by  the  doctors,  and  who 
have  found  out  the  inutility  and  worthlessness  of  medicine, 
are  naturally  the  most  difficult  to  convince.  I  do  not  blame 
them.  I  have  been  through  that  same  school  myself.  I 
ascertained  to  my  cost  how  useless  it  is  to  trust  to  the  doc- 
tors or  to  any  modern  system  of  medicine,  and  when  one 
has  tried  every  remedy  and  had  them  all  fail,  one  very  nat- 
urally looks  with  a  little  suspicion  upon  another  new  one 
that  may  come  to  light. 

A  few  years  ago  I  was  one  of  the  most  faithful  followers 
of  the  doctors.  I  took  any  thing  and  every  thing  they 
offered  me.  I  saw  nothing  outside  of  medical  science,  and 
swallowed  every  thing  there  was  within  it.  But  my  experi- 
ence satisfied  and  destroyed  all  my  faith.  I  no  longer  had  con- 
fidence when  I  discovered  that  every  thing  deceived  me,  and 
I  cannot  find  fault  with  others  who  are  in  the  same  position. 
Charlatans  and  quacks  understand  this  proneness  of  people 
to  put  confidence  in  the  profession,  so  when  they  want  to 
sell  medicines  they  call  them  blood  purifiers,  or  specifics  for 
nervous  debility  or  for  special  diseases.  They  seldom  pro- 
fess to  cure  every  thing,  and  by  thus  abstaining  they  pay  a 
tribute  to  medical  ethics.  I  have  often  been  told  by  physi- 
cians that  I  make  a  mistake  when  I  undertake  to  cure  every 
thing  and  to  abolish  or  remove  all  diseases.  That  word  all 
overcomes  them.  They  would  not  so  much  mind  my  curing 
a  few,  because  then  they  could  have  the  balance  for  them- 
selves. But  if  I  cure  all,  why  there  is,  of  course,  no  field  left 
for  them  to  work  in.  But  I  cannot  limit  my  sphere  of 
usefulness.  Nature  showed  me  that  there  is  but  one  cause 
of  disease,  and  the  cures  I  made  endorsed  that  teaching. 
Why,  then,  should  I  withhold  the  truth  and  deceive  the 
public  by  denying  my  own  knowledge? 

I  have  often  heard  it  said,  by  very  smart  persons  too,  that 
they  cannot  believe  in  a  medicine  that  cures  all,  so  such  people 
must  still  accept  the  doctrine  that  the  causes  of  disease  are 
very  many,  as  many,  probably,  as  the  divisions  into  which  the 


180  MICROBES. 


doctors  themselves  classify  human  ailments.  It  is  strange, 
when  we  contemplate  the  enormous  strides  that  the  world 
has  made  of  late  years  in  every  branch  of  industry  and  in 
every  other  section  of  knowledge,  to  see  how  little  progress 
has  been  made  in  medical  science.  It  still  lags  as  far  behind 
as  it  was  a  hundred  years  ago.  I  do  not  refer  to  chemistry 
and  to  mechanical  preparations,  but  to  the  practice  of  medi- 
cine and  surgery.  Physicians  are  multiplied  enormously. 
There  are  medical  institutes,  medical  schools  and  colleges, 
medical  books,  in  vastly  increased  numbers,  and  there  are 
also  larger  graveyards  and  more  of  them.  What  improve- 
ments have  the  doctors  made  in  the  cure  of  disease  ?  None. 
What  advance  has  medical  science  made  ?  None  whatever. 
If  a  physician  can  cure  catarrh,  cancer,  consumption,  he  can 
cure  all  diseases,  because  they  are  only  a  few  of  the  results 
of  disease  germs.  Those,  therefore,  who  promise  to  cure 
those  might  as  well  undertake  to  cure  every  thing.  But  the 
truth  is,  that  medical  science  never  has  succeeded  in  destroy- 
ing micro-organisms.  It  has  never  killed  microbes.  If  the 
doctors  can  do  so,  why  do  they  not  come  forward,  not  with 
promises,  but  with  proof  that  they  have  done  it  ?  No,  they 
cannot  do  it,  and  they  still  number  them  among  the  incura- 
ble diseases.  This  book  should  open  the  eyes  of  the  people 
to  the  fact.  It  should  let  them  see  the  true  state  of  things, 
how  they  have  been  kept  in  ignorance  first,  and  then  how 
that  ignorance  has  been  imposed  upon,  and  how  they  have 
been  misled  and  deceived.  They  will,  however,  soon  see 
things  in  a  new  light.  The  cause  of  disease  is  so  simple.  It 
is  nothing  more  than  a  fulfilment  of  the  law  under  which 
small  bodies  feed  on  and  destroy  larger  ones.  They  are 
visible  to  us,  and  they  cannot  therefore  be  doubted. 

I  explained  in  a  previous  chapter  the  nature  of  the  ordi- 
nary lichen,  which  consists  of  two  parts,  one  of  which  is  a 
parasite,  and  that  is  only  an  example  of  a  system  prevalent 
in  nature.  People  who  are  ready  to  deny  this,  which,  if  they 
choose,  they  can  see  for  themselves,  are  quite  willing  to  accept 
the  doctrine  of  a  personal  devil,  although  they  cannot  see  him 


CURABILITY  OF  TUBERCLE  AND   CONSUMPTION.      l8l 

and  have  no  proof  whatever  of  his  existence.  There  is  no 
disputing  that  the  masses  of  the  people  are  ignorant  of  these 
subjects.  They  do  not  give  them  sufficient  thought,  and  I 
am  glad  to  have  the  opportunity  to  enlighten  them.  But 
there  is  no  excuse  for  the  medical  profession.  They  have 
every  opportunity  to  learn  the  truth.  They  devote  them- 
selves to  the  subject  of  disease  and  still  they  remain  in 
ignorance,  and  when  a  patient  dies  under  their  hands  the 
law  protects  them,  and  they  care  nothing  so  long  as  they 
receive  their  fees. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  MICROBE  KILLER  IN  LEPROSY. 

THERE  are  two  popular  errors  on  the  subject  of  leprosy. 
Many  people  suppose  that  "it  is  not  contagious  ;  and  still 
more  think  that  it  is  uncommon,  or  at  any  rate,  that  it  is 
confined  to  certain  parts  of  the  world.  Both  ideas  are  erro- 
neous,— but  for  the  first  there  is  ample  excuse.  About 
thirty  years  ago  the  disease  assumed  a  virulent  form  in 
Demerara,  a  settlement  in  British  Guiana.  The  London 
Colonial  Office  submitted  the  matter  to  the  Royal  College 
of  Physicians,  and  through  that  body  sent  a  series  of  ques- 
tions to  various  portions  of  the  empire.  A  committee 
chosen  by  the  college  examined  and  collated  the  informa- 
tion thus  obtained,  and  drew  up  a  report,  which  was  pub- 
lished in  1867,  in  which  they  announced  that  a  consensus  of 
opinion  throughout  the  world  was  opposed  to  the  belief  that 
leprosy  was  contagious  or  communicable  by  proximity  or 
contact  with  a  diseased  person.  They  also  said  that  leprosy 
is  rarely  transmissible  in  married  life  where  one  of  the 
parties  has  no  tendency  to  the  disease.  This  report  was 
accepted  as  conclusive,  and  measures  previously  in  vogue  on 
the  supposition  that  the  disease  was  contagious  were  aban- 
doned, and  as  a  result,  the  mortality  from  it  has  been  greatly 
increased.  "  It  may,"  says  an  English  physician,  "  without 
much  exaggeration,  be  said  that  if  leprosy  slew  its  thousands 
before,  it  has  slain  its  tens  of  thousands  within  the  confines 
of  the  British  Empire  since  1867.  Even  outside  the  limits 
of  Her  Majesty's  sway  the  evil  effect  has  been  felt,  for  the 

182 


THE  MICROBE  KILLER  IN  LEPROSY.  183 

authority  of  an  institution  which  was  supposed  to  be  the 
concrete  embodiment  of  medical  science,  necessarily  had 
great  weight  in  the  minds  of  foreign  practitioners."  That 
that  unfortunate  "  Report  on  Leprosy  "  did  not  do  still  more 
harm  is  only  due  to  the  fact  that  the  dangerous  doctrine 
which  it  was  intended  to  enforce  was  not  universally  acted 
upon  ;  the  practical  common-sense  of  mankind  in  many 
places  where  leprosy  has  its  home  refusing  to  be  led  astray 
by  theoretical  opinion.  The  doctrine  laid  down  in  the 
report  was  the  reverse  of  truth,  and  the  fact  soon  became 
realized  when  it  was  seen  how  rapidly  the  disease  increased 
when  the  old  restrictions  were  withdrawn.  It  is  evident 
that  the  persons  upon  whom  the  committee  had  relied  for 
information,  were  either  incompetent  or  untrustworthy,  and 
it  would  have  been  better  if  a  commission  had  gone  out  and 
sought  facts  for  themselves,  when  they  would  certainly  have 
found  ample  evidence  of  the  transmissibility  of  the  disease. 
Doubts  may  have  been  due  to  the  circumstance  that 
leprosy  takes  its  own  time  to  develop,  as  was  made  evident 
in  the  case  I  have  referred  to  at  page  34,  but  that  ought  not 
to  have  led  a  body  like  the  College  of  Physicians  into  so 
serious  a  blunder.  Frere  fitienne  in  a  little  work  entitled 
"  La  L6pre  est  Contagieuse  "  mentions  an  instance  of  a  lady 
in  Venezuela  whose  husband  died  of  leprosy.  She  was  at  the 
time  in  perfect  health,  but  five  years  afterwards  was  a  well 
confirmed  leper.  Another  case  is  given  where  a  man  be- 
came leprous  by  frequently  visiting  the  hospital,  and  whose 
wife  remained  for  ten  years  without  showing  any  sign  of  the 
disease,  to  which,  however,  she  ultimately  fell  a  victim.  Dr. 
Goddard,  a  young  French  physician,  and  a  stern  believer  in 
the  non-contagious  nature  of  leprosy,  went  to  Palestine  and 
took  up  his  residence  in  one  of  the  lazar-houses  that  are  not 
infrequent  in  that  country.  For  a  time  he  felt  that  his 
experiment  had  proved  the  accuracy  of  his  opinion,  but  he 
took  the  disease  and  ultimately  died  of  it.  There  is  also 
abundant  evidence  obtainable  that  persons  whose  duty  it  is 
to  attend  upon  the  sick  are  frequently  attacked.  It  would 


1 84  MICROBES. 


appear  from  the  partial  statistics  that  have  thus  far  been 
obtained,  that  the  proportion  amounts  to  about  fifty  per 
cent.,  certainly  not  less  and  probably  very  much  more.  Of 
the  contagious  character  of  the  disease  then  there  is  no 
longer  any  room  for  doubt.  It  is  transmissible  and  insidi- 
ous, the  victim  not  knowing  when  he  is  first  smitten. 

Leprosy  is  also  a  common  disease.  A  writer  in  the  New 
York  Saturday  Review  of  February  22d,  reports  having  seen 
a  woman  seriously  affected  with  it  riding  in  a  Broadway  car, 
and  it  is  well  known  that  there  are  several  cases  in  this  city 
about  which  no  precautions  are  taken.  In  the  Appendix 
will  be  found  an  abstract  of  a  discussion  in  the  New  York 
Academy  of  Medicine  on  this  subject,  which  is  well 
deserving  attention.  Sir  Morell  Mackenzie  has  also  accu- 
mulated some  valuable  data.  He  points  out  how  it  has 
been  carried  into  California  by  the  Chinese,  into  some  of  the 
Northwestern  States  by  Norwegians,  and  into  Salt  Lake 
City  by  Mormon  converts  from  Honolulu.  "  In  Louisiana, 
where  last  century  leprosy  prevailed  so  extensively  that  a 
hospital  for  it  was  founded  in  1785,  it  again  showed  itself  in 
1866,  in  a  woman  whose  father  was  a  native  of  the  south  of 
France.  From  this  fresh  centre  the  disease  has  spread  to 
such  an  extent,  that  Dr.  Blane  recently  reported  forty- two 
cases  in  New  Orleans  alone."  It  broke  out  in  South  Caro- 
lina in  1847,  and  between  that  and  1882  sixteen  cases  were 
reported,  the  first  victims  being  Jews  whose  families  had 
immigrated  early  in  the  century.  There  were  also  some 
native  Americans  and  one  Irishman. 

Norway  is  the  most  considerable  leprosy  centre  of  Eu- 
rope, but  the  disease  there  is  limited  to  certain  regions, 
especially  the  districts  round  Bergen,  Molde,  and  Trond- 
jeim.  It  was  prevalent  in  Sweden  at  the  beginning  of  the 
century,  but  has  nearly  died  out  there  now.  Spain  is  an- 
other of  its  strongholds.  Dr.  Roman  Viscarro  says  :  "  From 
time  immemorial  lepers  have  swarmed  in  Spain,  especially 
in  the  provinces  of  Asturias,  Tarragona,  Valencia,  and  Cas- 
tellon.  Dr.  John  Webster  visited  that  country  to  study  the 
disease  about  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  when  it  was  said 


THE  MICROBE  KILLER  IN  LEPROSY.  185 

to  be  spreading.  He  found  fifty-three  cases  in  the  hospital 
at  Granada,  and  he  heard  of  284  more  outside.  In  1880  Sir 
Morell  Mackenzie  found  thirty-nine  sufferers  in  the  San 
Lazaro  hospital  at  Seville,  and  he  learned  that  as  many  as 
twenty-one  had  been  admitted  in  one  year.  But  these  fig- 
ures give  no  adequate  idea  of  the  truth,  for  in  addition  to 
the  sufferers  who  enter  the  hospitals  there  are  many  more 
who  remain  at  home  with  their  families,  some  maintained 
by  them,  others  dependent  on  public  charity,  and  probably 
only  those  seek  shelter  in  a  hospital  who  are  destitute  of  all 
resource.  Leprosy  is  especially  prevalent  in  the  district  of 
La  Marina,  which  takes  in  the  seaboard  of  the  two  provinces 
of  Valencia  and  Alicante. 

Portugal  stands  next  to  Norway  in  the  number  of  its 
lepers.  In  Italy  the  disease  prevails  on  the  Genoese  Riviera, 
and  at  Commachio,  and  it  is  rapidly  spreading  in  Sicily.  It 
is  very  prevalent  in  Crete,  and  cases  are  to  be  found  in  other 
islands  of  the  Eastern  Mediterranean,  as  well  as  in  Greece 
and  Hungary.  Occasionally  it  is  met  with  as  far  north  as 
St.  Petersburg. 

In  Nice  and  Savoy  it  is  not  uncommon,  and  Dr.  Besnier, 
of  the  French  Hopital  St.  Louis,  says  that  since  France 
had  extended  her  colonial  possessions  French  soldiers,  sail- 
ors, traders,  and  missionaries  have  fallen  victims  to  leprosy 
in  large  numbers.  The  disease  is  certainly  spreading  in 
France,  but  that  statement  of  Dr.  Besnier  is  remarkable  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  while  the  British  Empire  extends  over 
a  fifth  of  the  globe,  there  is  no  leprosy  in  Great  Britain 
unless  an  isolated  case  be  occasionally  imported. 

It  is  increasing  rapidly  in  the  West  Indies.  In  1805  there 
were  three  cases  in  Trinidad.  In  1815  this  number  had 
increased  to  seventy-seven.  In  1878  this  again  had  grown 
to  eight  hundred  and  sixty,  so  that  in  that  small  community 
the  disease  had  extended  four  times  more  rapidly  than  the 
population.  It  was  the  alarming  increase  of  the  victims  in 
Barbadoes  that  led  to  the  report  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians  that  I  have  referred  to. 

When  the  English  began  the  colonization  of  New  Zealand 


1 86  MICROBES. 


in  1839  a  peculiar  form  of  leprosy  was  discovered  there,  and 
it  has  since  been  met  with  in  other  parts  of  the  Pacific.  In 
precolonial  days  the  natives  killed  lepers,  and  care  was  taken 
never  to  eat  the  flesh  of  one.  The  disease  is  most  common 
in  a  zone  of  about  twenty-five  miles  around  Lake  Taupo, 
but  it  has  never  affected  the  white  settlers  unless  they  live 
among  the  Maories  or  intermarry  with  them.  It  is,  how- 
ever, steadily  on  the  increase  within  the  district  where  it 
prevails. 

The  supposed  number  of  lepers  in  India  is  250,000, 
though  only  135,000  are  on  record.  There,  too,  the  number 
is  increasing,  as  it  also  is  in  Canada,  but  only  among  the 
French  population  of  the  province  of  Quebec  and  in  New 
Brunswick.  The  most  remarkable  development  of  the  dis- 
ease in  recent  times  is  in  the  Sandwich  Islands.  Until  1853 
it  was  unknown  there.  In  that  year  one  case  was  noted 
in  Oahu,  a  thinly  populated  place  about  twenty  miles  from 
Honolulu.  In  1859,  when  it  was  first  officially  recognized, 
there  were  less  than  ten  marked  cases,  but  the  number  rap- 
idly increased,  so  that  in  five  or  six  years  it  had  become 
quite  a  common  occurrence  for  lepers  to  apply  for  relief  at 
the  public  dispensary.  An  official  return  in  1865  gave  230 
patients.  In  1866  the  segregation  settlement  at  Molokai  was 
opened,  and  since  then  more  than  three  thousand  cases  have 
been  received  there.  In  1888  there  were  749  at  the  settle- 
ment, but  Dr.  Prince  A.  Morrow,  of  this  city,  who  has  vis- 
ited the  place  recently,  and  given  much  attention  to  the 
disease,  puts  the  present  number  at  1,100. 

The  origin  of  leprosy  is  unknown.  The  Maories  attribute 
it  to  the  use  of  fish  from  Lake  Taupo  as  an  article  of  food, 
and  the  disappearance  of  the  disease  in  England  has  been 
put  to  the  credit  of  improved  agriculture  and  an  abundant 
supply  of  fresh  food  and  vegetables.  There  has  been  a  fre- 
quent tendency  to  the  belief  that  a  constant  fish  diet  has 
something  to  do  with  it,  but  it  cannot  be  sustained.  Neither 
climate,  soil,  nor  race  has  any  thing  to  do  with  it,  nor  is 
there  any  force  in  the  theories  that  it  depends  on  a  defi- 


THE  MICROBE  KILLER  IN  LEPROSY.  187 

ciency  of  salt  in  the  food  or  of  potash  in  the  blood.  We 
know  that  it  may  be  derived  by  heredity  and  by  contagion, 
but  there  our  certain  knowledge  ends.  If,  however,  the 
origin  be  obscure,  the  cause  is  better  defined.  Even  physi- 
cians are  beginning  to  look  upon  it  as  a  microbe  disease,  as 
it  certainly  is  in  common  with  all  other  human  ailments. 
There  is  nothing  exceptional  in  leprosy.  Dr.  Danielsen,  of 
Norway,  has  studied  the  disease  throughout  a  long  life 
among  his  countrymen,  and  he  believes  that  much  of  the 
prevalence  is  due  to  heredity.  His  son-in-law,  Dr.  Hansen, 
took  up  the  inquiry  at  the  point  to  which  Danielsen  had 
brought  it,  and  he  was  the  first  to  discover  the  peculiar 
microbe  of  the  disease,  which  he  designated  bacillus  leprce, 
and  which  at  once  settles  the  question  of  contagion,  if  it  had 
not  been  settled  before.  But  where  this  microbe  originates 
is  not  yet  ascertained.  We  cannot  trace  it  as  we  can,  for 
example,  the  microbe  of  tetanus  in  Cuba.  It  has  been  sug- 
gested that  possibly  it  may  ultimately  be  found  in  fish, 
but  that  is  merely  an  idea  arising  out  of  the  other  theory, 
that  a  fish  diet  is  a  predisposing  cause  of  leprosy.  Certain 
it  is  that  the  disease  has  always  been  most  prevalent  in 
times  of  want  or  when  the  vitality  of  the  people  has  been 
lowered  by  poor  or  insufficient  food.  The  overcrowded 
tenement-houses  of  New  York  are  especially  adapted  to  the 
spread  of  leprosy,  possibly  to  its  origin,  and  it  is  a  disease 
which,  when  once  recognized,  should  come  under  the  atten- 
tion of  the  government.  Sanitary  arrangements,  segrega- 
tion, and  an  abundance  of  wholesome  and  nutritious  food 
for  the  patients  are  essential  elements  of  success  in  its  treat- 
ment and  of  its  prevention. 

Dr.  Arning,  who  undertook  the  inoculation  of  the  prisoner 
in  Hawaii,  and  who  watched  the  case,  has  defined  his  opin- 
ions upon  the  disease.  He  says  : 

ist.  That  the  bacillus  of  leprosy  is  limited  to  the  human 
race. 

2d.  That  it  must  be  transmitted  either  directly  from  in- 
dividual to  individual,  or, 


1 88  MICROBES. 


3d.  Through  a  stage  of  poor  condition  which  we  are  at 
present  unable  to  detect,  but  which  may  be  present  in  the 
soil,  water,  or  food,  but  can  only  get  into  them  from  the 
diseased  tissues  of  a  leper. 

4th.  Accepting  either  theory — the  direct  or  indirect  trans- 
mission,— we  must  look  upon  every  individual  leper,  whether 
in  the  incipient  or  advanced  state  of  the  disease,  as  a  dan- 
gerous focus  of  the  malady,  he  multiplying  and  nursing  the 
germ  in  his  tissues. 

5th.  As  every  seed  requires  its  conditions  of  soil,  atmos- 
phere, etc.,  to  allow  it  to  strike,  and  when  struck  to  grow  up 
and  be  itself  a  seed-bearing  plant,  so  does  the  leprous  mi- 
crobe require  a  certain  disposition  of  the  human  soil  to 
strike  and  thrive.  What  this  peculiar  disposition  may  be  we 
are  at  present  unable  to  define.  It  is  evidently  a  condition 
which  may  coexist  with  apparent  good  health,  as  many 
examples  of  strong,  robust  men  developing  leprosy  show  us. 
This  disposition  may  be  transmitted  by  heredity. 

The  only  part  of  this  statement  to  which  exception  may 
be  taken  is  the  first.  It  is  not  certain,  only  probable,  that 
the  leprous  microbe  is  peculiar  to  mankind.  Further  inves- 
tigation may  prove  that,  if  time  be  given  it,  it  might,  by 
inoculation,  produce  a  similar  disease  in  other  animals,  but 
three  or  four  years  would  be  necessary.  This  is,  however, 
of  small  consequence  compared  with  the  fact  that,  even 
though  the  medical  profession  admits  that  leprosy  is 
caused  by  a  microbe,  no  successful  means  of  combating 
the  disease  has  been  applied  by  it,  and  it  has  remained 
for  the  microbe  killer  to  produce  any  thing  like  satisfactory 
results. 

The  case  that  I  am  about  to  mention  presents,  however, 
some  conditions  that  were  an  extremely  unfavorable  test  of 
the  remedy.  The  disease  had  been  long  developed,  the 
patient  was  very  much  reduced,  and  his  circumstances  have 
been  such  that  he  has  not  been  able  to  obtain  proper  nour- 
ishment, but,  on  the  contrary,  his  system  has  been  through- 
out ill  nourished  and  reduced,  simply  for  the  reason  that  he 


THE  MICROBE  KILLER  IN  LEPROSY.  189 

has  not  been  able  to  provide  himself  with  necessaries. 
Nevertheless,  the  results  are  highly  encouraging  and  satis- 
factory. 

It  was  some  time  in  July,  1889,  that  I  went  to  New 
Orleans  to  see  the  patient  whom  my  company  then  had 
mentioned  to  me.  They  were  anxious  to  test  the  effect  of 
my  discovery  in  leprosy,  and  the  occasion  was  the  first  that 
had  offered  itself.  We  had  tried  before,  but  every  case  we 
met  with  was  under  medical  treatment,  and  the  physician  in 
charge  would  not  allow  us  an  opportunity  to  test  the  medi- 
cine. They  have  even  attempted  to  dissuade  the  man  who 
is  now  under  our  care  from  continuing  with  us,  although  he 
has  derived  so  much  benefit.  This  man's  name  is  James 
Kavanaugh.  He  was  a  member,  as  I  am  informed,  of  a  fire 
company  at  Algiers.  When  I  first  saw  him  he  had  been 
using  the  microbe  killer  for  five  weeks,  and  he  assured  me 
that  he  already  experienced  considerable  relief.  His  condi- 
tion, however,  was  most  pitiful.  I  had  never  seen  any  thing 
like  it.  Persons  interested  in  the  company  turned  from  the 
sight,  sickened  by  what  they  saw.  I  remained  with  him  for 
half  an  hour,  making  a  thorough  examination.  He  was 
living  in  a  poorly  furnished  cabin,  amid  conditions  that  held 
out  but  little  hope  of  success.  The  place  was  not  attended 
to.  Sanitary  requirements  were  neglected.  Foul  matter 
was  to  be  found  on  the  bed  and  surroundings,  and  the  more 
I  studied  the  prospect  the  more  convinced  I  became  that 
the  disease  had  advanced  too  far  to  justify  me  in  looking  for 
a  cure.  His  tongue  was  swelled  so  that  he  had  difficulty  in 
closing  his  mouth  ;  his  eyebrows  and  toe-nails  had  dropped 
off  ;  the  skin  might  be  peeled  off  in  large  flakes  from  various 
parts  of  the  body ;  his  eyes  appeared  as  though  about  to 
fall  from  their  sockets  ;  swellings  were  in  every  limb,  and  his 
ears  were  enlarged  to  twice  the  size  that  they  would  have 
been  in  health. 

I  held  him  out  very  little  encouragement,  for  the  advanced 
stage  to  which  the  disease  had  arrived,  and  the  inability  of 
the  man  to  obtain  nourishing  food  and  plenty  of  it,  caused 


MICROBES. 


me  much  misgiving.  He  was  willing,  however  to  put  him- 
self in  our  hands,  all  other  treatment  having  failed,  and  I 
undertook  to  do  what  I  could.  I  told  him  that  the  microbe 
killer  must  be  used  very  freely,  both  externally  and  in- 
ternally, every  place  where  fermentation  had  developed 
being  kept  continually  moist  with  it.  He  accordingly  in- 
creased the  amount,  and  exclusive  of  external  applications 
he  drank  eight  wineglassfuls  of  the  strongest  form  (No.  3) 
daily.  The  effect  of  this  was  to  stop  all  evidences  of  fer- 
mentation in  about  three  months,  and  his  father  reported 
to  me  such  a  marked  improvement  that  I  was  anxious  to 
see  him  again.  I  made  an  examination  of  his  blood  and 
found  that  all  microbe  life  in  that  had  diminished,  and 
hence  I  became  convinced  that  at  last  a  cure  for  leprosy 
had  been  discovered,  if  only  it  can  be  properly  applied.  If 
this  man  had  had  to  purchase  the  remedy  he  would  never 
have  been  cured,  for  he  had  not  the  means,  but  this  diffi- 
culty could  of  course  be  overcome  if  it  were  used  in 
dispensaries  and  public  hospitals. 

As  he  continued  to  steadily  improve  I  visited  Algiers 
again,  this  time  taking  with  me  Mr.  Lilienthal,  a  photogra- 
pher of  New  Orleans,  and  then  I  obtained  the  photograph 
which  was  the  original  of  the  illustration.  The  engraving 
is  not  as  effective  as  the  photograph,  and  that  hardly  con- 
veyed a  complete  idea  of  the  man's  appearance.  Mr. 
Lilienthal  was  at  first  very  reluctant  to  come  with  me  into 
the  presence  of  a  leper,  but  consented  on  being  told  that 
there  was  no  danger,  and  that  I  would  handle  the  man 
myself.  He  is  always  ready  to  testify  as  to  these  facts. 
The  patient  was  photographed  in  his  kitchen,  and,  as  we 
thought,  every  thing  was  kept  very  private.  But  soon  it 
leaked  out.  Newspaper  reporters  were  sent  to  investigate, 
and  they  had  personal  interviews  with  Kavanaugh,  the 
result  of  which  was  the  appearance  of  an  article  in  the  New 
Orleans  Picayune  which  is  sufficiently  interesting,  apart  from 
its  value  as  an  endorsement  of  the  microbe  killer,  to  justify 
my  quotation  here  in  full.  It  read  as  follows : 


LEPER.    (AUSSATZ.) 

James  Kavanaugh,  Algiers,  I_a.      From  photograph  by  Lilienthal, 
137  Canal  Street,  New  Orleans. 


THE  MICROBE  KILLER  IN  LEPROSY.  191 


LEPROSY  IN  ALGIERS. 


JAMES   KAVANAUGH    A    VICTIM    OF    THE   DREADED   DISEASE. 


OTHER   CASES   ALLEGED    TO    EXIST    IN    AND    ABOUT    ALGIERS. 


THE    PATIENT    IMPROVING    AFTER   ONCE    GIVEN    UP    TO    DIE. 


DECIDED   DANGER    OF    THE   SPREAD    OF    LEPROSY   IN    AMERICA. 


All  medical  authorities  agree  that  leprosy  is  one  of  the  most 
dreaded  of  all  the  ills  humanity  is  heir  to.  A  well-known  writer 
on  the  subject,  in  making  general  observations,  says  that  by  the 
term  leprosy  a  disease  of  the  cutis  only  was  originally  meant, 
terminating  sometimes,  perhaps,  unfavorably  in  unhealthy  sores 
or  spreading,  sloughy  ulcerations,  marasmus,  and  decay  of  mental 
and  bodily  strength  ;  but  in  many,  the  majority  of  cases,  where 
cleanliness  may  have  been  attended  to,  in  slow  and  gradual  return 
to  health.  Medical  authorities  are  not  agreed  as  to  whether  or 
not  the  disease  is  contagious,  but  the  civil  authorities  of  all 
countries  where  the  disease  has  been  found  have  shown  alarm 
and  endeavored  to  isolate  the  subjects. 

According  to  Wilson,  lepra  is  described  as  a  non-contagious 
and  chronic  inflammation  of  the  derma,  consisting  in  the  eruption 
on  various  parts  of  the  body  of  raised  and  circular  patches  which 
are  speedily  covered  by  thin,  semi-transparent  scales  of  white  and 
morbid  epiderma.  The  patches  are  prominent  around  their 
circumference  and  somewhat  depressed  in  the  centre ;  they 
increase  by  the  extension  of  their  periphery,  while  the  central 
area  gradually  returns  to  the  natural  state.  During  the  progress 
of  the  patches  the  scales  are  often  thrown  off  and  replaced  by 
successive  formations.  The  local  disorder  is  unaccompanied  by 
constitutional  symptoms  ;  it  is  most  strongly  marked  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  knee  and  elbow  joints,  where  it  frequently 
forms  patches  of  large  size  and  endures  for  a  considerable  length 
of  time,  sometimes  recurring  at  particular  periods  for  several 
years  and  lasting  for  several  months.  The  varieties  of  lepra, 
with  the  exception  of  the  syphilitic  form,  are  mere  modifications 
of  the  same  disease,  dependent  on  trivial  circumstances.  This 


192  MICROBES. 


author  treats  of  four  varieties — lepra  vulgaris,  lepra  alphoides, 
lepra  nigricans,  lepra  syphilitica. 

These  remarks  are  prompted  by  the  discovery  of  a  genuine, 
well-developed  case  of  leprosy  located  in  a  little  isolated  house  at 
the  corner  of  Chestnut  and  Eliza  streets,  Algiers,  across  the  river 
from  New  Orleans.  The  leper  is  a  young  man  named  James 
Kavanaugh,  aged  twenty-nine  years. 

He  was  visited  yesterday  by  a  representative  of  the  Picayune, 
and  quite  an  interesting  chat  was  held  with  him  regarding  his 
most  unfortunate  condition.  Inquiry  among  physicians  and 
citizens  of  Algiers  and  the  man's  general  appearance  settled  the 
fact  beyond  dispute  that  he  is,  or  was  until  recently,  in  the  last 
stages  of  the  loathsome  and  hideous  disease.  It  is  also  current 
rumor  that  there  are  other  cases  of  leprosy  in  and  about  Algiers  ; 
in  fact  the  people  do  not  seem  to  feel  any  alarm,  and  talk  about 
the  disease  with  as  much  indifference  as  if  it  were  a  bad  cold 
under  discussion. 

Kavanaugh  was  born  and  raised  in  Algiers,  and  was  for  eleven 
years  employed  as  a  teamster  by  the  Morgan  Railroad  Company. 
He  was  quite  popular  among  his  associates  about  the  railroad 
shops  and  in  the  town  generally.  He  was  an  active  and  popular 
member  of  Morgan  Steam  Fire  Company  No.  3,  and  is  practically 
under  the  care  of  the  firemen  at  present. 

The  disease  began  to  show  itself  about  four  years  ago  in  small 
brown  spots  on  the  chest  and  neck.  He  called  in  a  prominent 
and  well-known  physician  on  this  side  of  the  river,  and  after  a 
thorough  diagnosis  of  the  case  it  was  pronounced  leprosy  and 
incurable.  Fearing  contagion  the  members  of  the  fire  company 
built  the  little  red-painted  house  above  mentioned,  and  young 
Kavanaugh  was  placed  there  as  a  doomed  man.  His  father  and 
sister  moved  into  the  house  with  him,  and  additional  rooms  were 
provided  for  their  occupancy.  In  a  short  time  the  disease  began 
to  spread  until  his  entire  body  was  covered  with  brown  spots  ; 
his  tongue  was  swollen  and  cracked  until  he  could  not  articulate 
distinctly  ;  nasal  passages  clogged  ;  his  eyebrows  and  lashes  fell 
off  ;  toe-nails  rotted  off,  and  his  entire  body  was  fast  becoming  a 
mass  of  putrefaction. 

A  purse  of  $500  was  made  up  by  the  firemen,  and  offered  to 
any  one  who  would  cure  him.  One  or  two  doctors  called  on  him, 
but  he  got  no  relief,  and  was  finally  given  up  to  die. 


LEPRA.— SKIN  SHOWINQ  MICROBES.     (BERLIN.) 


LEPROSY.— FROM  JAMES  KAVANAUGH. 


THE  MICROBE  KILLER  IN  LEPROSY.  193 

About  three  months  ago  Kavanaugh  began  taking  a  preparation 
called  Radam's  Microbe  Killer,  extensively  advertised  as  a  de- 
stroyer of  microbes,  which  infest  animal  and  vegetable  life,  and 
strange  to  say  he  is  not  only  very  much  improved,  but,  according 
to  his  own  statement  made  to  the  Picayune  reporter  yesterday,  be- 
lieves firmly  that  the  remedy  will  finally  cure  him. 

Kavanaugh  states  that  he  takes  the  remedy  eight  times  a  day 
and  keeps  saturated  rags  on  his  body,  and  in  consequence  the 
swelling  in  his  ears  has  gone  down,  the  ulcers  on  his  feet  are 
healing,  and  that  he  has  certainly  experienced  more  relief  from 
the  use  of  this  remedy  than  anything  else  he  has  tried.  Is  it  pos- 
sible that  here  is  actually  a  cure  for  leprosy  ?  If  so,  and  appear- 
ances would  seem  to  prove  it,  patent  medicine  though  it  be,  it 
should  be  accorded  due  merit.  When  seen  yesterday  the  leper 
was  walking  about  the  yard  surrounding  his  house  and  smoking 
a  cigar.  He  spoke  distinctly  and  seemed  cheerful  and  lively. 

Asked  how  he  thought  he  contracted  the  disease — whether  by 
inheritance  or  by  contagion, — he  said  his  father  and  sister  lived  in 
the  same  yard  with  him  and  were  perfectly  healthy  ;  that  his  pro- 
genitors were  all  a  hardy,  healthy  people,  and  that  he  believed  he 
had  caught  the  disease  from  a  young  man  who  worked  in  the 
Morgan  shops  several  years  ago  and  died  from  supposed  leprosy. 

At  the  present  time  a  fair  estimate  puts  the  number  of  lepers 
in  the  United  States  as  not  less  than  three  hundred.  Of  course, 
there  is  no  means  of  determining  just  how  many  cases  America  is 
harboring,  and  very  likely  the  number  given  is  much  too  small. 

Dr.  Morrow,  who  has  studied  the  subject  closely,  holds,  accord- 
ing to  the  Medical  News,  that  there  exists  a  decided  danger  of 
the  spread  of  leprosy  in  America.  He  thinks  that  the  disease  in 
its  present  state  here  might  be  compared  to  a  conflagration,  which 
could  easily  be  extinguished  at  first,  but  which,  left  to  itself  until 
it  had  gained  a  certain  headway,  could  not  be  subdued  until  after 
the  material  it  had  to  feed  upon  had  become  exhausted.  In  the 
Sandwich  Islands  in  1848  there  were  but  few  cases  of  leprosy,  and 
for  twenty  years  the  government  paid  no  attention  to  the  disease. 
By  that  time  there  were  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  cases,  and 
the  authorities,  becoming  alarmed,  took  stringent  measures  for  its 
repression.  A  system  of  segregation  was  adopted,  but,  unfortu- 
nately, the  danger  was  appreciated  too  late.  Dr.  Morrow  says 
he  does  not  believe  that  a  calamity  such  as  has  overtaken  the 
13 


194  MICROBES. 


Hawaiians  is  in  store  for  this  country  ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  he 
thinks  there  is  a  sufficiency  of  leprosy  seed  here  to  stock  this  or 
any  other  country. 

Cases  of  leprosy  have  developed  in  New  Orleans  before,  and 
the  leper  settlement  on  Bayou  La  Fourche  is  too  uncomfortably 
close  to  repel  all  fear  of  a  spread  of  the  disease,  when  the  increase 
on  the  Sandwich  Islands  is  contemplated. 

On  July  2 1st  the  following  appeared  in  the  same  paper : 

LEPROSY  IN  ALGIERS. 

SEVERAL    OTHER   CASES   REPORTED    BY    A    LEADING    PHYSICIAN    OF 
THAT    SUBURB. 

Further  investigation  of  the  case  of  the  young  man,  James 
Kavanaugh,  in  Algiers,  who  is  now  suffering  from  tubercular 
leprosy,  and  is  attracting  considerable  attention,  discloses  the 
fact  that  his  companion  and  associate,  a  few  years  ago,  was  a 
man  named  Mallager,  who  resided  in  the  Third  district,  near  the 
Mint.  This  man  was  afflicted  with  the  loathsome  disease,  and 
Kavanaugh  was  constantly  in  his  company,  at  times  ate  with  him 
and  drank  out  of  the  same  vessel  that  he  did,  and  it  is  evident 
that  he  contracted  the  disease  by  so  doing. 

Some  time  ago  two  alleged  Mexican  physicians  called  to  see  the 
leper  and  agreed  to  cure  him.  Physicians  in  Algiers  and  in  the 
city  agreed,  if  they  did,  to  give  them  thousands  of  dollars  to 
know  the  cure.  The  Mexicans  set  to  work  and  closeted  Kava- 
naugh in  a  close  room  and  put  him  through  the  sweating  process. 
Before  doing  this,  however,  they  covered  his  hair  with  a  piece  of 
mosquito  bar  tightly  drawn  around  the  forehead,  and  tattooed  his 
face  and  entire  body  with  mercurial  ointment,  giving  him  the  ap- 
pearance of  an  Indian.  They  worked  on  the  man  in  this  manner 
for  three  weeks  with  but  little  or  any  relief,  and  then  discovered 
that  they  would  have  to  return  to  Mexico  for  certain  remedies. 
The  gentleman  having  charge  of  the  fund  raised  by  the  citizens 
to  pay  for  curing  the  man  gave  them  $100  for  their  trouble,  and 
they  left  and  have  not  yet  returned. 

A  prominent  physician  of  Algiers  was  visited  by  a  reporter  of 
the  Picayune  and  questioned  in  regard  to  the  above  case,  and  he 


THE  MICROBE  KILLER  IN  LEPROSY.  195 

remarked  that  he  had  under  his  observation  several  suspicious 
cases.  He  knew  of  a  case  of  a  mother  and  son,  residing  near 
Morgan  No.  3*5  engine-house,  who  were  pronounced  lepers.  The 
daughter,  who  is  a  married  woman  residing  in  one  of  our  par- 
ishes, has  all  the  appearances  of  having  become  attacked  by  the 
disease. 

The  physician  stated  that  he  was  now  attending  to  an  aged 
negress  who  was  suffering  from  tubercular  leprosy.  The  nails 
on  her  toes  had  rotted  off  and  he  had  amputated  the  toes.  The 
disease  began  eating  the  foot,  and  on  last  Friday  he  amputated 
the  foot  at  the  instep.  There  is  also  a  case  in  Gretna,  the  suf- 
ferer being  a  baker.  Some  time  ago  this  baker's  brother  died 
from  the  disease.  This  physician  desires  that  the  Board  of 
Health  send  a  corps  of  experts  to  Algiers  to  inquire  into  the 
suspicious  cases. 

Two  days  afterward  the  Picayune  printed  the  following 
letters  from  the  patient  and  his  father,  who  both  felt  that  it 
was  but  right  to  make  known  over  their  own  signatures  the 
effect  of  my  treatment  on  a  disease  that  had  hitherto  baffled 
the  highest  medical  skill : 

NEW  ORLEANS,  LA.,  July  23,  1889, 
Fifth  District. 

I  positively  assert  that  my  son  was  afflicted  with  that  most 
loathsome  and  hideous  disease,  LEPROSY,  and  of  a  character 
most  malignant.  Any  person  who  may  doubt,  or  be  skeptical  re- 
garding this  case,  is  most  cordially  invited  to  call  and  see  him 
now,  or  at  any  early  date,  at  my  residence,  No.  157  Eliza  Street, 
Algiers,  Fifth  District  ;  because  if  not  seen  soon,  and  he  continues 
to  improve  as  he  has  since  beginning  the  use  of  William  Radam's 
Microbe  Killer,  they  will  not  have  an  opportunity  of  giving  an 
honest  verdict  concerning  his  case. 

Respectfully, 

JAMES  KAVANAUGH. 

I,  the  undersigned,  do  hereby  declare  that  I  have  been  afflicted 
with  "  Leprosy  "  for  over  four  years  ;  my  sickness  has  been  pro- 
nounced "  Leprosy  "  by  the  leading  physicians  and  the  public 


196  MICROBES. 


generally,  and  I  was  entirely  abandoned  and  left  alone  to  die  ;  but 
thanks  to  Mr.  Wm.  Radam,  whose  medicine,  or  Microbe  Killer,  I 
have  been  using  for  five  weeks  with  the  most  beneficial  results, 
I  am  satisfied  that  by  continuing  his  great  and  wonderful  remedy 
a  few  months  longer  I  shall  again  be  able  to  go  to  work  and  sup- 
port my  poor  aged  father,  upon  whom  I  have  been  a  drawback  in 
his  declining  years. 

Respectfully, 

JAMES  KAVANAUGH,  Jr. 

James  Kavanaugh,  Jr.,  has  all  along  steadily  continued  to 
improve.  On  January  20,  1890,  I  received  a  letter  telling 
me  that  he  can  eat  as  much  as  any  man,  if  he  only  had  it. 
He  says  that  his  head  is  very  much  swollen,  but  not  nearly 
as  badly  as  when  he  began  the  treatment.  There  are  still  a 
few  sores  on  his  feet,  from  which  a  greenish  matter  exudes  ; 
but  the  upper  part  of  his  body  is  nearly  cleared  of  all  appear- 
ance of  disease,  and  no  new  ulceration  has  taken  place.  He 
further  states  that  three  physicians  from  the  hospital  have 
called  to  see  him,  and,  after  the  closest  examination,  they 
besought  him  to  go  now  to  the  hospital  and  put  himself 
under  their  care.  The  reader  will  understand  the  meaning 
of  this.  They  failed  to  relieve  him  when  they  had  the 
chance,  and  now,  finding  him  so  much  benefited,  they  are 
anxious  to  have  some  of  the  credit. 

This,  however,  I  can  say,  that  my  patient  will  either  be 
cured  by  the  Microbe  Killer,  or  he  will  die  ;  but  the  present 
appearances  are  favorable  to  a  cure,  and  I  advise  every  leper 
who  can  do  so  to  go  at  once  to  New  Orleans  and  see  James 
Kavanaugh  and  his  neighbors  and  judge  for  themselves.  If 
any  physicians  attempt  to  remove  the  man,  as  they  desire  to 
do,  I  must  take  further  action  at  once,  although  the  revolu- 
tion in  medical  treatment  must  come  sooner  or  later.  The 
eyes  of  the  public  are  being  opened,  and  the  Microbe  Killer 
is  in  the  hands  of  the  people  who  make  the  laws  and  the 
government. 

In  the  last  letter  that  I  received  from  Kavanaugh,  he  says 
that  he  had  had  to  stop  the  medicine  for  a  few  days,  on 


PECULIAR  SKIN   DISEASE.     (NEW  ORLEAMS.) 


SKIN  DISEASE  IN  NEW  ORLEANS. 


THE  MICROBE  KILLER  IN  LEPROSY.  1 97 

account  of  some  passing  indisposition,  and  that  he  had  then 
resumed  it  in  smaller  doses,  but  that  all  his  wounds  and 
ulcers  had  nearly  healed,  and  that  he  was  growing  stronger. 
This  completes  the  history  of  the  case  up  to  April  2,  1890, 
and,  in  a  subsequent  edition  of  this  work,  I  hope  to  be  able 
to  report  it  as  that  of  the  first  leper  cured. 

Any  favorable  result  must  necessarily  be  slow.  It  is  not 
dissimilar  from  one  of  phthisis,  or  low  tubercular  disease. 
They  are  curable,  but  time  is  required,  sometimes  two  years 
probably,  and  Kavanaugh  has  not  yet  been  one  year  under 
my  treatment.  The  microbes  must  be  destroyed,  but, 
what  is  of  equal  importance  and  more  tedious,  the  tissues 
must  be  renovated.  The  system  must  be  built  up,  and  this 
is  where  good  nourishing  food,  which  unfortunately  Kava- 
naugh has  not  got,  becomes  almost  essential.  The  case, 
even  at  this  stage,  testifies  to  the  power  of  the  microbe  killer 
as  an  antiseptic.  It  proves  that  no  microbes,  not  even  the 
bacillus  of  lepra,  can  exist  in  its  presence,  and  that  they 
must  cease  to  multiply  in  the  tissues  when  these  last  are 
thoroughly  permeated  with  it. 

It  is  difficult  to  take  people  out  of  their  customary  ruts, 
to  make  them  reason  for  themselves  on  lessons  which  Nature 
offers,  and  to  induce  them  to  believe  facts  which  are  beneath 
their  eyes.  For  ages,  even  throughout  history,  it  has  been 
customary  to  regard  leprosy  as  an  incurable,  as  well  as  a 
most  loathsome,  disease,  and  so  it  has  been.  But  my  con- 
viction is  that  a  cure  is  now  to  be  had  in  my  discovery,  and 
if  I  cannot  convince  others  by  putting  before  them  truths 
which  are  tangible  and  cannot  be  controverted,  it  is  not  my 
fault.  I  am  not  responsible  for  the  blindness  of  people  who 
will  not  see,  but  most  certain  it  is  that  the  only  case  of  lep- 
rosy that  has  come  under  my  treatment,  that,  too,  a  very 
bad  one,  and  surrounded  by  most  unfavorable  conditions, 
many  of  which  are  still  at  work,  has  been  very  materially 
benefited,  while  it  is  reasonable  to  believe  that  time  only 
is  needed  for  a  further  improvement,  even  to  a  complete 
restoration,  to  be  effected. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

HOW   TO   USE   THE   MICROBE   KILLER. 

I  TRUST  I  have  now  made  sufficiently  clear  the  position  in 
which  I  stand  with  my  discovery,  the  study  which  led  me 
to  it,  the  nature  and  universality  of  micro-organisms,  their 
relations  as  a  common  cause  of  disease,  the  means  to  be 
employed  to  destroy  them  and  to  renovate  the  system,  the 
failures  of  medical  science  and  of  ordinary  remedies  used  by 
physicians,  and  the  necessity  for  a  complete  saturation  of  the 
system  with  any  medicine  that  must  be  effectual  to  remove 
the  cause  of  the  disease  and  to  rehabilitate  the  blood.  I  will 
now  state  generally  the  rules  that  should  be  followed. 

I  wish  to  say  most  emphatically  that  the  microbe  killer 
is  harmless.  I  cannot  lay  too  much  stress  upon  this,  first  in 
direct  contradiction  to  those  who  have  asserted  so  gratui- 
tously that  it  is  injurious,  and  then  because  it  is  necessary 
to  use  it  in  considerable  quantities  to  renovate  the  entire 
system.  I  have  shown  that  those  persons,  whether  doctors 
or  mere  adventurers,  who  say  that  the  preparation  is  poison- 
ous, do  so  without  any  real  knowledge  of  the  character  of  my 
discovery.  It  is  neither  poisonous  nor  injurious  in  the 
smallest  degree,  but,  on  the  contrary,  it  may  be  given  to  the 
youngest  children  with  most  absolute  confidence.  It  will 
not  injure  the  eyes  nor  the  most  delicate  tissues.  It  will  not 
destroy  the  enamel  of  the  teeth,  although  even  this  has  been 
alleged  against  it  by  my  enemies.  It  is  slightly  acid,  but  not 
as  acid  as  ordinary  pickles,  which,  indeed,  may  be  injurious, 
because  they  contain  acetic  acid,  sometimes  even  sulphuric 

198 


HOW  TO  USE  THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  199 

acid.  Be  sure  that  those  who  bring  charges  against  me  of  harm- 
ing people  are  merely  trying  to  serve  their  own  interests. 

The  microbe  killer  cannot  be  compared  with  ordinary 
drugs.  It  does  not  contain  any  of  them.  It  is  pure  water, 
permeated  with  gases  which  are  essential  to  the  nourishment 
of  the  system,  and  in  which  micro-organisms  cannot  live  and 
propagate,  or  fermentation  exist.  It  may  be  taken  almost 
like  water,  and  it  must  be  so  taken  when  a  full  and  perma- 
nent effect  is  desired,  so  that  the  tissues  shall  be  thoroughly 
soaked  with  it,  and  the  blood  become  perfectly  purified. 
Each  one  of  my  companies  furnishes  a  separate  circular  which 
forms  a  general  guide  in  using  the  microbe  killer,  for 
special  instructions  are  not  required  here.  I  have  already 
explained  how  to  use  it  in  chronic  cases  of  long  standing.  In 
acute  cases,  where  the  progress  of  the  disease  is  rapid  and  the 
microbes  increase  very  fast,  it  must  be  used  in  large  doses, 
and  then  it  very  often  makes  a  cure  immediately.  If  a 
person  were  attacked  with  cholera,  small  doses  would  of 
course  be  useless.  Active  disease  requires  active  treatment. 
Very  often  every  hour  is  of  importance,  and  if  time  be  lost 
at  the  start  it  is  impossible  to  make  up  for  it  afterwards,  and 
the  patient  dies  before  control  of  the  trouble  can  be  obtained. 
Thus  in  cholera  the  system  must  be  thoroughly  influenced 
as  soon  as  possible  with  the  microbe  killer,  so  that  the 
propagation  of  the  micro-organisms  shall  be  stopped  at  once. 
Intermittent  fever  equally  demands  the  complete  permeation 
of  the  tissues,  but  it  is  a  disease  that  acts  less  promptly,  and 
consequently  a  slower  and  longer  treatment  may  be  neces- 
sary. It  may  be  taken,  as  a  rule,  that  the  more  active  the 
disease  the  more  prompt  must  be  the  measures  that  are 
taken  to  overcome  it,  and  the  more  chronic  the  disease  the 
longer  will  be  the  time  required  to  combat  it. 

Whiskey  is  acknowledged  by  the  doctors  to  be  a  good  cure 
for  snake  bites,  but  of  what  would  be  the  use  to  administer 
small  doses  at  long  intervals  ?  The  patient  would  be  dead 
before  the  second  dose  became  due.  It  must  be  given  in 
large  quantities  and  with  the  least  possible  delay,  and  in  that 


200  MICROBES. 


way  only  can  it  be  of  any  service.  A  pint  of  strong  whiskey 
or  even  more  may,  in  these  cases,  be  taken  with  advantage 
and  without  any  injurious  effects.  The  same  holds  good 
with  the  microbe  killer  in  acute  forms  of  disease.  If  some 
antiseptics,  such  as  carbolic  acid,  bichloride  of  mercury,  sul- 
phuric acid,  and  others  could  be  used  in  that  way,  possibly 
many  forms  of  disease  could  be  cured  that  the  doctors  now 
describe  as  incurable.  But  it  is  not  so.  We  cannot  so  use 
such  antiseptics  without  killing  the  patient  before  getting  rid 
of  the  microbes,  and  hence  these  diseases  cannot  be  cured. 

To  show  how  harmless  my  discovery  is,  and  still  effectual, 
I  may  say  that  I  have  sometimes  taken  as  much  as  a  quart 
in  three  or  four  hours  for  severe  cold,  but  in  every  case  I 
succeeded  in  breaking  the  cold  up,  or,  to  put  it  better,  I 
destroyed  the  special  microbes  before  they  had  a  chance  to 
go  through  the  system. 

There  are  certain  forms  of  fever  very  closely  allied  to  each 
other  in  their  symptoms.  Of  these  we  have  what  is  com- 
monly called  chills  and  fever  in  its  mild  form,  then  ague, 
dengue  fever,  bone-break  or  back-break  fever,  chagres  fever, 
and  the  violent  fever  which  is  met  with  in  the  western  part 
of  tropical  Africa.  It  is  likely,  too,  that  la  grippe,  which 
has  been  so  prevalent  this  last  year,  is  of  the  same  kind. 
Differences  here  depend  very  largely  upon  climatic  con- 
ditions, the  severity  of  the  disease  being  increased  in  tropi- 
cal and  pestilential  countries,  and  they  illustrate  the  necessity 
of  prompt  action.  In  ordinary  chills  it  may  suffice  to  treat 
steadily  and  in  fairly  moderate  doses,  but  in  chagres  fever 
large  doses  without  loss  of  time  would  be  the  only  means  of 
saving  life. 

When  the  case  of  leprosy  already  recorded  was  submitted 
to  me,  I  saw  at  a  glance  that  to  stop  the  process  of  fermen- 
tation that  was  going  on  the  unfortunate  patient  would  need 
at  least  six  to  ten  glasses  daily,  and  that  at  the  same  time  all 
the  diseased  parts  should  be  kept  in  contact  with  the  medi- 
cine so  as  to  destroy  micro-organisms  on  the  surface  and  to 
have  the  full  benefit  of  absorption  by  the  skin.  When  this 


<* •>»  ' 


•       '•      '     •<  "»  ..•    '• 

- ' 


<  * 


BACTERIA.     (BERLIN.) 


NAILERS'  CONSUMPTION. 


HOW  TO  USE  THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  2OI 

was  done  decay  or  fermentation  was  arrested  at  once,  or  at 
any  rate  as  soon  as  the  system  became  permeated  with  the 
medicine.  This  done,  it  may  sometimes  happen  that  the 
dose  may  be  lessened,  but  it  is  always  better  under  all 
circumstances  to  use  it  freely,  to  take  as  much  internally  as 
the  system  can  stand,  and  to  apply  it  externally  whenever  it 
can  be  done  with  advantage. 

Leprosy  and  phthisis  are  very  different.  In  a  consump- 
tive patient  there  is  a  loss  of  part,  or  sometimes  the  whole, 
of  an  organ.  The  lungs  are  diseased,  and  portions  at  least 
of  them  are  no  longer  capable  of  bringing  the  atmospheric 
air  to  vivify  the  blood.  But  in  a  leper  the  organs  are  not 
necessarily  affected,  and  I  should  expect  that  leprosy  will 
yield  more  readily  than  phthisis  to  the  microbe  killer, 
although,  when  too  far  advanced,  both  diseases  are  incurable. 
If  a  piece  of  meat  be  already  fermented  to  a  condition  of 
putrefaction,  it  cannot  be  restored  to  its  former  condition, 
and  that  is  much  the  case  in  the  two  diseases  named.  We 
cannot  reproduce  an  organ  like  the  lung  that  has  been 
destroyed  by  tubercle,  any  more  than  we  can  reproduce 
a  limb  that  has  been  removed  by  amputation. 

There  is  another  reason.  In  a  consumptive  patient,  the 
cause  of  fermentation,  the  microbe,  can  be  destroyed,  but 
the  disease  has  weakened  the  recuperative  powers  of  the 
body.  Nourishment  does  not  have  its  normal  effect.  The 
blood  is  impoverished,  and  the  system  cannot  restore  it 
quickly  enough.  So  that,  although  the  microbe  be  killed,  and 
the  state  of  fermentation  be  stopped,  the  patient  is  too  far 
gone  to  be  resuscitated.  The  blood  has  not  time  to  be 
replaced,  the  tissues  cannot  be  renewed.  In  short,  it  is 
more  correct  to  say  that  a  person  in  such  condition  is 
already  more  near  to  death  than  to  a  cure. 

At  the  same  time,  there  is  no  reason  at  all  why,  in  the 
early  stages  of  consumption,  a  person  should  not  be  cured. 
There  is  generally  a  predisposition  to  phthisis.  It  is  in- 
herited. But  a  person  may  inherit  the  predisposition  to 
phthisis  and  yet  die  in  old  age  of  some  other  cause.  It 


202  MICROBES. 


requires  an  exciting  stimulus.  Common  cold  is  often  the 
beginning  of  active  consumption,  and  a  cold  can  certainly 
be  cured  by  the  microbe  killer,  without  leaving  behind  any 
germs  of  disease. 

The  trouble  may  go  further.  Phthisis  may  have  set  in. 
The  first  stage,  with  cough  and  all  the  other  symptoms 
of  consumption,  may  have  begun,  and  still  I  should  not 
despair  of  curing.  The  fermentation  may  be  stopped,  and 
while  the  lungs  are  not  seriously  injured  they  may  be 
healed,  and  at  this  stage  the  general  system  is  not  so  weak- 
ened but  that  the  blood  may  be  restored.  The  nutritive 
functions  do  not  give  way  all  at  once,  and  as  long  as  the  as- 
similative process  goes  on,  and  the  diseased  processes  are 
stopped,  a  cure  may  be  effected,  and  the  person  be  restored 
to  fairly  good  health,  if  not  to  the  vigor  that  belongs  to  one 
who  has  not  inherited  any  taint  in  the  system.  In  such 
cases,  although  some  people  may  be  inclined  to  regard  them 
as  chronic,  active  treatment  should  be  adopted,  and  the 
whole  body  should  be  brought  under  the  influence  of  the 
medicine  as  quickly  and  effectually  as  possible.  It  may 
indeed  be  taken  as  a  rule  in  every  case  to  use  as  much 
of  the  medicine  as  possible  until  relief  is  afforded,  because  it 
cannot  harm  anybody,  and  always  it  is  well  to  produce  an 
effect  as  speedily  as  possible.  It  is  easy  to  reduce  the  dose 
when  the  trouble  is  under  control. 

In  malaria  and  intermittent  fever  large  doses  should  be 
used  at  first,  and  continued  until  the  fever  has  abated  or 
ceased,  then  more  moderate  doses  will  suffice,  but  they 
must  be  continued  until  the  blood  is  purified,  the  microbes 
removed,  the  corpuscles  restored  to  their  normal  healthy 
condition,  and  the  patient  shows  this  change  by  a  return  of 
the  appearance  of  restoration  in  the  superficial  capillaries  of 
the  skin, — which  give  a  rosy  color  to  the  cheeks  and  a  warm 
clear  appearance  to  the  complexion. 

With  a  correct  understanding  of  Nature's  laws,  it  becomes 
apparent  that  we  can  cure  every  disease  that  comes  before 
us  at  the  right  time,  if  proper  conditions  are  fulfilled  and 


HO  W  TO  USE  THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  203 

persevering  and  efficient  treatment  be  adopted,  because  it  is 
simply  a  purification  of  the  blood  that  is  demanded.  If  we 
attain  to  that,  we  have  done  all  that  is  possible.  It  does  not 
matter  where  the  disease  is,  or  how  it  may  be  classified,  be- 
cause the-  entire  system  must  be  purified,  and  thus  every 
weak  portion  will  be  covered.  It  is  unnecessary  to  inquire 
about  details,  suffice  it  to  know  that  there  is  trouble  of  any 
kind,  and  the  microbe  killer  will  reach  it.  We  cannot  make 
a  mistake.  That  would  be  impossible.  I  have  but  one 
form  of  my  medicine.  My  discovery  is  Single.  There  may 
be  different  degrees  of  strength,  but  that  is  all.  The  com- 
position of  the  microbe  killer  remains  the  same.  I  have 
experimented  to  ascertain  if  I  could  improve  it,  so  as  to 
make  cures  more  rapidly,  but  it  cannot  be  done.  It  would 
be  contrary  to  Nature.  Progress  must  be  gradual.  We 
must  aid  Nature,  we  cannot  force  her.  We  cannot  obtain 
any  purification  of  the  blood  by  injecting  any  thing  into  the 
circulation.  The  functions  must  be  continued,  and  the 
blood  must  be  nourished  through  them,  for  any  permanent 
effect.  Only  in  that  way  can  we  replace  what  is  lost,  and 
bring  the  blood  back  to  a  normal  and  natural  condition. 

There  is  no  inconsistency  in  what  I  have  said  about 
leprosy  and  consumption,  or  in  the  statement  that  all 
diseases  may  be  overcome,  but  that  certain  stages  of  phthisis 
are  incurable.  When  the  true  value  of  my  discovery  shall 
be  known,  leprosy,  consumption,  cancer,  and  such  ailments 
will  be  unknown.  People  will  not  wait  until  a  lung  has 
become  useless,  or  until  a  large  cancer  has  actually  formed. 
As  soon  as  any  premonitory  symptoms  arise,  they  will  have 
recourse  to  the  microbe  killer.  They  know  that,  directly 
evidences  of  disease  make  their  appearance,  microbes  are 
present,  and  they  will  not  give  them  a  chance  to  make 
headway  and  to  get  control  of  the  body.  They  will  have 
recourse  without  delay  to  the  medicine,  and  the  ailment 
will  be  stopped  at  the  outset.  Cancer  or  consumption,  as 
we  know  them  now,  will  not  be  permitted  to  develop. 

It  may  be  well  here  while  on  this  topic,  to  record  the  fact 


204  MICROBES. 


that  the  chances  of  inhaling  the  microbe  of  consumption, 
which  is  a  bacillus,  are  very  good.  The  habit  of  expectora- 
tion, which  a  recent  writer  names  as  one  of  the  distinctive 
marks  of  the  American  people,  viewed  from  an  ethnological 
point  of  view,  is  not  without  its  dangers.  Bollinger  has 
demonstrated  that  a  cubic  centimetre  of  phthisical  sputum 
contains  from  eight  hundred  and  ten  thousand  to  nine  hundred 
and  sixty  thousand  microbes.  So  that  in  an  ordinary  day  a 
consumptive  person  expectorates  thirty  or  forty  millions  of 
these  micro-organisms,  from  which  it  is  estimated  that,  with 
about  ten  thousand  tuberculous  people  in  this  city,  three 
hundred  thousand  millions  of  microbes  are  thrown  out  daily. 
As  the  sputum  dries  on  the  ground  or  in  street  cars  or 
railways,  these  microbes  pass  in  large  numbers  into  the  air, 
and  thus  to  some  extent  they  promise  to  be  injurious  to 
healthy  persons. 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  therefore,  that  phthisis  can  only 
be  obtained  by  heredity.  There  is  no  doubt  but  that  the  special 
bacillus  may  be  taken  into  the  lungs,  and  that  if  inspired  in 
sufficient  quantities,  and  unless  the  person  be  constitutionally 
strong  enough  to  resist  them,  they  may  propagate  and  imme- 
diately proceed  to  bring  about  all  the  evils  of  consumption. 
Thus  it  is  evident  that  anybody  is  liable  to  this  dread 
disease,  and  especially  are  those  liable  who  abide  in  rooms 
with  friends  or  patients  who  are  affected,  and  such  persons, 
although  apparently  in  perfect  health,  should  use  the  microbe 
killer  freely  as  a  precautionary  remedy. 

Prevention  of  disease  is  more  important  than  cure,  at  least 
in  one  sense — that  is,  it  implies  the  preservation  of  health, 
whereas  the  other  means  only  a  restoration  to  health.  Too 
little  attention  is  paid  to  this.  Bad  drainage  prevails  in  spite 
of  all  the  evils  that  are  known  to  arise  from  it.  Diets  are  neg- 
lected because  the  people  lack  moral  courage  to  forego 
satisfying  their  tastes  even  at  the  expense  of  their  comfort. 
Injurious  habits  are  persevered  with,  although  those  who 
follow  them  know  well  that  they  are  shortening  their  lives  and 
weakening  their  systems,  and  people  often  allow  a  fatal 


FATTY  DEGENKRATION  OF  KIDNEY.    (PARIS.) 


CHRONIC   CYSTITIS. 


HOW  TO  USE  THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  2O$ 

disease  to  seize  them  because  they  were  too  thoughtless  or 
too  indolent  to  take  the  necessary  precaution  to  prevent  it. 
Each  is  apt  to  think  that  he  himself  is  secure  from  attack ; 
or  sometimes  persons  may  be  prevented  doing  any  thing 
because  they  do  not  know  what  to  do,  and  they  delay  ap- 
plying for  aid  because  they  have  not  confidence  enough 
in  the  doctors  or  money  enough  to  pay  the  fees  that  would 
be  exacted  from  them.  The  doctors  themselves  often  let  a 
patient  die  because  they  are  dilatory  and  unwilling  to  obtain 
the  necessary  assistance. 

But  this  must  soon  stop.  The  day  for  a  change  in  all  this 
is  near  at  hand.  When  people  know  that  they  have  a  certain 
and  safe  cure  in  their  own  home,  which  they  can  use  in 
perfect  confidence  without  advice  or  aid  from  any  physician, 
they  will  not  get  sick  ;  they  will  not  give  disease  a  chance  to 
get  hold  of  them,  but  they  will  take  the  microbe  killer,  first 
as  a  preventive  and  then  as  a  curative  agent,  directly  the 
necessity  for  something  makes  itself  known.  I  believe  I 
have  accomplished  more  in  two  years  with  my  discovery, 
than  has  ever  been  done  by  any  thing  of  the  kind  before, 
especially  when  I  consider  the  opposition  I  have  had  to 
encounter  from  imitators  and  from  the  medical  profession.  I 
have  done  something  which  will  reform  the  entire  treatment 
of  disease.  I  have  put  the  cause  of  disease  in  a  new  light. 
I  have  enlightened  the  people,  who  have  hitherto  been 
the  victims  of  ignorance  and  of  the  erroneous  theories  of 
medical  science.  I  have  shown  the  only  means  by  which 
disease  can  be  cured,  and  I  have  so  simplified  the  whole  thing 
that  everybody  may  become  his  own  physician,  and  thus 
avoid  the  perils  that  are  necessarily  involved  where  dangerous 
drugs  are  used  and  where  empiricism  forms  so  large  a  part  in 
the  physician's  practice.  Moreover,  I  have  inaugurated  a 
reform  which  will  save  the  people  from  that  most  objection- 
able of  all  payments,  the  doctor's  bill. 

The  idea  that  any  specific  can  cure  all  diseases  has  been 
made  unpopular  in  many  ways.  Charlatans  have  come  for- 
ward and  made  that  pretence  to  advertise  their  wares,  and 


2O6  MICROBES. 


they  possibly  sold  something  that  would  not  cure  any  thing. 
Then  of  late  years  specialists  have  become  more  numerous 
within  the  pale  of  the  profession.  Formerly  this  was  not 
considered  in  accordance  with  the  strict  laws  of  ethics,  neither 
is  it  now,  but  nevertheless  the  custom  has  extended  and  is 
further  extending,  and  specialism  is  in  direct  opposition  to 
the  principle  I  have  laid  down  as  the  results  of  my  study  of 
Nature,  and  of  my  simplification  of  the  cause  of  disease. 
Thus  the  idea  has  got  about  that  nobody  can  cure  all  ail- 
ments,— and  when  I  introduced  myself  as  ready  to  do  so  peo- 
ple thought  me  crazy.  This  was  nothing.  There  are  always 
plenty  of  persons  ready  to  regard  everybody  else  as  mentally 
weak  who  happens  to  hold  opinions  different  from  their  own. 
The  doctors  were  most  prominent  in  declaring  me  of  un- 
sound mind,  and  perhaps  if  any  two  of  them  had  had  the 
chance  they  would  have  prepared  a  certificate  which  would 
have  consigned  me  to  a  lunatic  asylum.  For  the  law  gives 
them  that  power,  and  a  very  extraordinary  one  and  a  very 
much-abused  one  it  is.  Among  my  customers  was  a  profes- 
sor who  bought  at  different  times  many  gallons  of  Microbe 
Killer,  but  he  once  said  to  me :  "  Mr.  Radam,  when  you  first 
introduced  your  '  Microbe  Killer '  I  told  my  wife  about  it, 
andshe  said  :  '  Oh,  I  am  sorry  for  Mr.  Radam,  the  poor  man  is 
crazy.' "  Yet  he  came  to  me,  used  a  great  deal  of  my  medi- 
cine, and  was  very  glad  he  had  done  so  for  it  did  him  a  great 
deal  of  good. 

I  have  often  been  amused  at  the  way  in  which  I  have  been 
talked  about  and  the  charges  made  against  me,  and  still 
more  amused  when  some  of  the  people  who  were  loudest  in 
condemning  me  and  pitying  me  were  among  the  most  faith- 
ful in  availing  themselves  of  my  discovery  and  among  the 
loudest  afterwards  in  its  praises.  How  many  times  I  have 
been  pronounced  out  of  my  mind  I  do  not  dare  to  say.  It 
has  been  too  many  to  keep  record  of.  But  I  have  grown  ac- 
customed to  it.  It  does  not  affect  me.  All  proprietors  of  new 
inventions  and  all  discoverers  of  even  the  most  useful  things 
have  had  the  same  to  go  through,  and  I  know  that  I  must 


HO  W  TO  USE  THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  2O/ 

submit  to  it.  I  can  afford  to  take  it  all  with  perfect  equa- 
nimity. I  regard  it  as  merely  the  idle  talk  of  ignorant  people, 
or  the  malicious  talk  of  persons  interested,  and-  unless  it  gets 
to  be  very  unreasonable  I  can  treat  it  with  contempt.  If, 
however,  it  passes  beyond  the  limits  that  I  am  willing  to 
allow,  I  do  not  propose  to  overlook  it,  and  the  people  must 
be  prepared  to  see  me  fighting  my  enemies  without  gloves.  I 
am  convinced  that  my  discovery  must  be  productive  of  the 
greatest  good.  It  preserves  the  body  from  an  enemy  which, 
although  invisible  to  the  naked  eye,  comes  to  view  under  the 
power  of  the  microscope  and  so  places  its  existence  beyond 
dispute,  and  if  in  like  manner  somebody  will  discover  a  means 
for  destroying  the  devil,  whom  no  instrument  known  has  yet 
discovered,  then  the  dawn  of  the  millennium  is  at  hand.  Jen- 
ner  discovered  a  means  of  mitigating  the  terrors  of  one  dis- 
ease, Pasteur  has  applied  the  same  principle  to  preventing 
another,  and  others  have  turned  it  into  account  to  theories 
about  preventing  yet  more.  I  have  made  a  discovery  which 
promises  to  prevent  and  to  cure  or  to  check  the  development 
of  all,  and  I  feel  justified  in  claiming  that  much  appreciable 
public  benefit  must  be  the  consequence. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

"LA   GRIPPE"   AND   THE   MICROBE   KILLER. 

THE  hurried  visit  paid  us  by  the  epidemic  last  year,  which, 
for  lack  of  a  better  name,  was  called  "  la  grippe,"  found  the 
doctors  absolutely  unprepared.  It  came  upon  them  suddenly, 
but  not  without  premonition,  if  only  natural  signs  had  been 
observed.  The  newspapers  did  a  great  deal  of  harm.  For 
the  sake  of  making  a  sensation,  they  exaggerated  and  mis- 
represented the  truth.  They  created  groundless  fears  in  the 
minds  of  the  people,  and  by  publishing  alleged  interviews 
with  physicians  who  wanted  to  advertise  themselves  in  that 
way,  they  showed  how  little  medical  science  was  doing  to 
alleviate  the  disease.  Druggists  broke  the  law  by  prescribing 
for  patients,  and  thus  every  thing  combined  to  render  the 
visitation  much  more  serious  than  it  would  under  reasonable 
circumstances  have  been.  Many  people  who  had  only  ordi- 
nary colds  read  the  newspapers  or  rushed  to  the  drug-stores, 
and  immediately  believed  that  they  were  on  the  brink  of  the 
grave,  while  others  who  had  a  genuine  attack  of  the  disease 
too  often  had  to  experience  the  utter  ignorance  of  ordinary 
physicians  as  to  the  principles  of  successful  treatment.  But 
it  afforded  a  good  opportunity  to  test  the  effect  of  the 
microbe  killer,  and  when  this  was  used  with  careful 
attention  to  instructions  its  power  was  most  marked.  In 
order  to  emphasize  the  contrast  I  must,  however,  enter  more 
fully  than  otherwise  would  be  necessary  into  the  subject,  and 
since  it  involves  several  points  of  interest,  I  have  no  hesita- 
tion in  doing  so. 

208 


11  LA    GRIPPE,"  AND  THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  209 

It  is  remarkable  how  unwilling  physicians  are  to  lay  aside 
old  notions,  and  even  now  many  of  them  are  reluctant  to 
admit  that  the  epidemic  was  any  different  from  what  for 
generations  had  been  known  to  them  as  influenza.  It 
appears  to  have  originated  in  a  town  a  few  miles  southwest 
of  St.  Petersburg,  but  how  we  cannot  say.  One  newspaper 
writer  in  London  put  forth  the  absurd  notion  that  it  was 
caused  by  the  putrefaction  of  bodies  of  Chinamen  drowned 
in  the  floods  that  occurred  in  China  a  few  months  previously ! 
A  woman  who  publishes  a  small  paper  in  Washington  an- 
nounced that  she  had  discovered  the  cause  in  some  theory 
propounded  by  a  friend  of  hers  fifteen  years  before !  And 
these  are  only  specimens  of  some  of  the  wild  suggestions 
that  were  made.  The  truth  is  that  nobody  has  yet  defined 
the  cause  of  it,  and  probably  never  will,  although  guesses 
may  be  numerous. 

It  spread  rapidly,  and  in  three  weeks  it  was  estimated  that 
half  the  population  of  St.  Petersburg  was  affected  by  it.  It 
then  travelled  into  Austria,  and  there  attempts  were  made  to 
define  it.  A  correspondent  writing  from  Vienna  was  unwill- 
ing to  acknowledge  that  it  was  contagious,  because  there 
were  instances  where  one  in  a  family  would  be  affected  and 
all  the  others  would  escape.  But,  again,  whole  families  might 
be  laid  down  in  succession,  and  yet  again  several  members 
might  be  attacked  and  the  rest  be  exempt.  At  first  it 
seemed  to  be  uninfluenced  by  age  or  sex,  but  later  they 
noticed  in  Vienna  that  very  old  people  escaped,  while  in 
New  York  the  young  people  were  rarely  attacked.  The 
incubation  period  was  supposed  to  be  about  two  days — and 
I  shall  revert  to  that  presently, — then  the  active  symptoms 
came  on  suddenly.  They  began  with  headache,  shivering, 
and  prostration  as  in  other  infectious  diseases.  In  this  city 
there  were  instances  where  persons  fell  suddenly  unconscious, 
and  remained  either  in  that  condition  or  in  delirium  for  two 
or  three  hours.  In  one  case  that  came  to  my  knowledge  a 
business  man  was  stricken  down  at  his  desk,  and  was  deliri- 
ous for  fourteen  hours  under  homoeopathic  treatment.  A 
14 


210  MICROBES. 


physician  of  what  is  known  as  the  regular  school  was  then 
sent  for.  He  treated  it  as  a  microbe  disease,  and  in  thirty- 
six  hours  the  patient  went  back  to  his  office  well.  The 
temperature  was  always  high,  sometimes  as  high  as  105°,  but 
it  fell  as  rapidly  as  it  rose,  and  the  disease  seldom  lasted  as 
long  as  four  or  five  days.  Under  proper  treatment  it  usually 
ran  its  course  in  two.  Convalescence  was  variable,  but  it 
seems  to  have  depended  more  upon  the  treatment  than  upon 
the  severity  of  the  attack.  The  worst  cases  often  got  well 
soonest  because  more  care  was  bestowed  upon  them.  Re- 
lapse from  neglect  was  very  common,  and  bronchitis  or 
pneumonia  sometimes  supervened  from  that  cause,  and 
proved  fatal.  In  all  these  respects  it  was  quite  different 
from  the  epidemic  of  influenza  which  prevailed  everywhere 
in  1847,  m  which  severe  catarrhal  symptoms  were  most 
prominent.  The  French  Academic  de  Medecine  also  deter- 
mined, after  a  very  exhaustive  discussion,  that,  although 
closely  resembling  dengue  fever,  it  was  not  identical  with  it, 
facts  which  point  to  the  inference,  independently  of  any 
other  knowledge  we  may  have,  that  influenza,  la  grippe,  and 
dengue  are  caused  by  three  different  microbes,' and  that  the 
difference  of  symptoms  in  different  instances  is  due  to  con- 
stitutional influences  or  to  changes  in  external  conditions. 

It  was  about  the  last  week  in  October,  1889,  that  la 
grippe  made  its  appearance  in  Russia,  and  I  never  hesitated 
a  moment  to  attribute  it,  as  I  do  all  other  disease,  to  the 
presence  of  a  microbe,  but  medical  science  was  averse  to  that 
idea.  Accordingly,  the  doctors  dealt  with  it  on  their  theory 
and  I  treated  it  on  mine.  Their  cases  derived  very  little 
benefit,  and  mine  were  cured.  But  now  let  us  note  how 
rapidly  medical  men  came  round  to  my  views.  The  epi- 
demic stimulated  inquiry,  and  in  January  Dr.  Klebs,  in 
Germany,  who  had  been  carefully  examining  the  blood  of 
influenza  patients,  found  a  micro-organism  different  from 
any  previously  described.  It  was  oval  in  form,  the  long 
diameter  being  about  twice  that  of  the  transverse,  and  it 
showed  slight  quivering  or  contractile  movements.  Stained 


"LA    GRIPPE,"  AND  THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  211 

with  blue  coloring  matter,  flagellae  became  apparent ;  and 
what  is  especially  worthy  of  note,  is  that  these  microbes  were 
for  the  most  part  within  the  blood  corpuscles,  just  as  are  the 
microbes  of  ague  or  malarial  fever.  Micro-organisms  have 
also  been  found  by  Kollmann,  Fraenkel-Weichselbaum,  Rib- 
bert,  Jolles,  and  others  in  Germany,  and  by  S6e  and  Bordes, 
Du  Casal,  and  Vaillard  and  Vincint,  in  France.  At  Bucha- 
rest most  careful  investigations  have  been  made,  and  in  the 
Centralblatt  fur  Bakteriologie  und  Parasitenkunde,  Babes  has 
described  two  forms  of  bacillus  which  he  found  in  influenza 
patients,  one  being  much  more  prevalent  than  the  other. 

These  must  not  be  confounded  with  forms  which  have 
been  illustrated  in  some  of  the  sensational  papers  as  having 
been  discovered  in  this  city.  The  latter  are  entirely  decep- 
tive, and  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  exigencies  of  modern 
journalism  should  lead  to  the  publication  of  many  things 
which  are  calculated  to  deceive,  or,  what  is  worse,  to  make 
the  people  distrustful  of  the  truth  when  it  is  honestly  put 
before  them. 

It  has  been  difficult  to  obtain  cases  of  la  grippe  for 
examination  which  were  entirely  free  from  other  complica- 
tions. Dr.  T.  Mitchell  Prudden  has  made  some  valuable 
investigations  on  the  subject,  but  he  could  examine  only 
seven  cases,  and  he  admits  that  three  at  least  of  these  were 
complicated  with  bronchitis,  but  several  forms  of  microbes 
were  discovered  in  all. 

Dr.  Jolles,  of  the  bacterian  laboratory  connected  with  the 
general  hospital  at  Vienna,  is  among  those  who  have  had  the 
best  opportunities  of  conducting  the  inquiry,  not,  be  it 
remembered,  an  inquiry  to  settle  whether  or  not  there  is  a 
special  microbe,  for  that  is  acknowledged,  but  to  identify  it. 
He  and  his  associate,  Dr.  Maximilian,  discovered  traces  of  it 
in  December  last,  and  people  who  are  accustomed  to  the 
use  of  the  microscope  know  how  difficult  such  results  are  to 
reach.  They  named  it  the  bishop  bacillus  from  a  peculiar 
form  which  it  presented  at  one  of  the  extremities.  They 
cultivated  it  in  quantities.  It  is  entirely  different  from  the 


212  MICROBES. 


microbe  of  cholera  and  yellow-fever,  but  bears  some  resem- 
blance to  that  of  pneumonia  discovered  by  Friedlander. 
This  is  important,  because  influenza  is  by  many  persons 
regarded  as  a  precursor  of  cholera,  a  supposition  which  can- 
not be  sustained  when  it  is  shown  that  the  microbes  of  the 
two  diseases  are  essentially  different.  The  same  microbe  is 
said  to  have  been  discovered  by  Dr.  Jolles  in  water  taken 
from  a  well  in  the  Styrian  Mountains.  If  this  discovery  can 
be  sustained,  it  would  point  probably  to  a  direction  where  the 
actual  origin  of  la  grippe  must  be  looked  for,  the  spread 
of  the  disease  being  due  to  its  infectious  and  contagious 
character. 

Even  this  was  denied  by  the  doctors  down  to  a  very  recent 
period,  but  they  are  gradually  and  apparently  reluctantly 
accepting  it.  The  following  incident  is  of  the  kind  that  they 
cannot  get  rid  of.  There  is  a  steamer  called  St.  Germain 
trading  between  ports  on  the  Mediterranean.  On  December 
2,  1889,  it  left  Saint  Nazaire.  It  put  in  at  Santander  three 
days  after,  and  there  took  on  board  a  first-class  passenger, 
just  arrived  from  Madrid,  where  la  grippe  prevailed.  The 
health  of  the  ship  had  before  been  good,  but  in  twenty-four 
hours  the  person  from  Madrid  was  taken  with  la  grippe; 
four  days  after  the  surgeon  of  the  ship  and  a  servant  were 
attacked,  and  between  the  I2th  of  December  and  the  7th  of 
January  of  this  year,  or  in  26  days,  no  less  than  154  out 
of  436  passengers,  besides  47  men  of  the  crew,  were  succes- 
sively affected.  No  better  illustration  of  the  transmissibility 
of  the  disease  could  possibly  be  desired.  It  completely  upsets 
the  theories  of  those  who  looked  upon  influenza  in  any  or 
every  form  as  purely  a  miasmatic  disease,  although  among 
them  were  some  who  have  always  been  regarded  as  leading 
authorities  in  medical  science. 

It  may  then  be  quite  safely  affirmed  at  the  present  time 
that  physicians  have  come  to  accept  my  view  of  the  disease, 
and  to  acknowledge  that  it  is  due  to  the  presence  of  a 
microbe  which  may  or  may  not  have  been  seen,  and  that  it 
is  both  infectious  and  contagious.  But  the  treatment  that 


"LA    GRIPPE,"   AND  THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  21$ 

medical  science  has  marked  out  is  a  curious  testimony  to  the 
confusion  that  exists  among  the  doctors  directly  they  are 
called  upon  to  kill  that  microbe.  Among  the  drugs  recom- 
mended for  the  purpose  I  find  aconite,  acetate  of  ammonium, 
opium,  morphia,  belladonna,  calomel,  phenacetin,  Dover's 
powder,  acetanilid,  antipyrin,  salol,  salicin,  salicylic  acid, 
salicylate  of  sodium,  convallamarin,  strychnia,  caffeine,  cam- 
phor, sulphate  of  spartein,  quinine,  carbamide  of  quinia,  musk, 
bromohydrate  of  quinine,  tannin,  arsenic,  and  how  many 
more  I  cannot  say.  From  the  fact  that  some  of  these  pow- 
erful agents  are  entirely  different  in  their  therapeutical  effects, 
it  is  self-evident  that  they  were  selected  experimentally,  and 
without  any  definite  purpose.  Little  wonder  then  that, 
while  la  grippe  was  present  with  us,  the  mortality  bills  were 
nearly  doubled.  Some  physicians  admitted  that  they  could 
do  nothing,  and  advised  that  in  every  instance  the  disease 
must  run  its  course ;  others — and  they  were  chiefly  of  homoeo- 
pathic pretensions — floundered  about  with  bryony,  gelsemi- 
um,  and  arsenic,  and  with  results  that  were  unfavorable  to  a 
startling  degree.  This  is  what  might  be  expected.  Almost 
all  the  drugs  I  have  named,  and  I  have  collected  them  from 
actual  experience  among  physicians'  prescriptions,  are  very 
powerful  poisons.  It  would  be  impossible  for  any  person  to 
have  the  tissues  of  his  body  saturated  with  them,  as  I  have 
shown  must  be  done,  and  to  live.  He  would  die  of  the 
medicine  long  before  it  could  reach  the  microbes.  But  the 
practice  of  the  homceopathist  involves  the  use  of  infinitesimal 
doses,  which,  even  if  the  agent  were  effective,  must  be  per- 
fectly useless.  Homoeopathy  is,  in  truth,  nothing  but  a 
scientific  name  for  the  policy  of  doing  nothing.  It  is  simply 
absurd,  and  an  insult  to  anybody's  reason  to  ask  him  to 
believe  that  such  quantities  of  any  remedy  as  the  homceopa- 
thist affects  to  administer,  can  permeate  the  system  and  pass 
into  all  the  tissues.  But  unless  it  does  that,  it  is  worthless, 
and  people  who  foolishly  rely  upon  it  are  indeed  trusting 
their  lives  to  a  broken  reed.  It  is  quite  easy  to  ascertain  by 
experiment  the  degree  of  strength  which  must  be  reached  in 
any  solution  of  the  most  powerful  antiseptics  in  order  to 


214  MICROBES. 


destroy  microbes.  A  weak  solution  they  resist.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  what  they  can  resist  outside  of  the  body  they  can 
survive  in  the  tissues,  and  that  if  we  would  destroy  them  we 
must  permeate  these  tissues  with  an  amount  of  the  remedy 
that  experiment  shows  to  be  necessary.  No  agent  used  on 
homoeopathic  principles,  under  the  most  favorable  circum- 
stances, has  yet  been  known  to  kill  microbes.  Many  interest- 
ing notes  bearing  upon  my  views  of  this  subject  are  given  in 
the  appendix,  but  a  careful  perusal  of  them  can  only  show 
the  strength  of  my  position,  and  point  out  conclusively  how 
utterly  at  variance  the  medical  treatment  of  la  grippe  has 
been  with  any  consistent  knowledge  of  its  nature,  or  of  the 
remedies  that  are  necessary  to  cure  it. 

The  results  of  my  own  experience  are  more  simple,  and 
can  be  briefly  disposed  of.  La  grippe  is  a  microbe  disease. 
If  the  doctors  allow  their  patients  to  die  while  they  are  mak- 
ing up  their  minds  about  it,  my  study  of  the  laws  of  nature 
enables  me  at  once  to  act  upon  the  knowledge  already  at- 
tained. During  the  prevalence  of  the  epidemic,  many  people 
availed  themselves  of  the  microbe  killer,  and  none  of  them 
regretted  it.  They  avoided  the  doctors,  and  merely  exer- 
cised their  own  judgment  while  using  the  remedy  under 
general  instructions,  and  always  with  satisfactory  results. 
Many  took  the  remedy  and  were  cured,  and  we  heard  no 
more  about  them.  Severer  cases  came  under  notice  more 
closely,  and  their  progress  was  watched.  I  usually  found  it 
desirable  in  the  first  instance  to  advise  a  gentle  laxative, 
especially  when  the  symptoms  were  urgent,  and  after  that  a 
free  use  of  the  microbe  killer  taken  in  doses  regulated  by 
the  age  and  constitution  of  the  patient,  and  applied  to  the 
lining  membrane  of  the  nostrils  and  external  air-passages 
when  there  were  any  catarrhal  symptoms.  The  effects  were 
speedy  and  effectual.  A  few  hours  often  sufficed  to  alleviate 
the  most  painful  indications,  and  improvement  which  began 
thus  soon  proceeded  until  a  complete  recovery  was  secured. 

I  have  said  in  the  beginning  of  this  chapter  that  the  in- 
cubation period  of  the  disease  has  been  supposed  to  last 
about  forty-eight  hours.  In  many  instances  the  patient  is 


"LA    GRIPPE,"   AND  THE  MICROBE  KILLER.  21$ 

not  cognizant  of  it,  but  where  he  is,  immediate  recourse  to 
the  microbe  killer  prevents  the  attack,  or  if  absolute  preven- 
tion be  not  obtained,  the  severity  is  so  much  lessened  that 
the  patient  surfers  nothing  that  renders  abstention  from  his 
ordinary  occupation  desirable  or  necessary.  During  the 
prevalence  of  any  epidemic  the  slightest  indication  of  trouble 
should  therefore  be  met  at  once  by  a  liberal  use  of  the 
medicine,  and  in  that  way  a  painful  if  not  a  serious  illness 
may  often  be  averted. 

Bronchial  affections  and  diseases  of  the  air-passages  and 
lungs  are  promptly  relieved  or  prevented.  In  New  York 
liability  to  these  complaints  is  unusually  great.  Sudden 
changes  from  the  dry  and  overheated  atmosphere  of  most 
houses,  the  bad  construction  of  street  and  railway  cars,  where 
no  control  is  exercised  by  conductors,  and  any  messenger- 
boy  or  imbecile  can  open  a  window  and  so  endanger  the 
health  of  half  a  score  of  other  passengers,  are  frequent  causes 
of  illness.  They  could,  of  course,  be  prevented,  but  they  are 
not  likely  to  be  until  people  are  intelligent  enough  to  under- 
stand the  danger  of  high  artificial  heat  in  winter,  and  until 
companies  and  public  servants  have  some  regard  for  the 
rights  of  individuals.  American  railroad  cars  have  some 
advantages  over  the  form  of  carriage  adopted  in  Europe,  but 
they  are  counterbalanced  by  numerous  disadvantages,  and 
among  others  the  far  greater  safety  and  healthfulness  of  the 
European  system  is  not  the  least  important.  This  could  be 
remedied  in  some  degree  if  means  of  ventilation  were 
adopted  which  involve  less  risk  to  travellers.  Meanwhile  the 
microbe  killer  presents  a  simple  and  effective  remedy.  An 
ordinary  cold  may  be  dissipated  by  its  use  in  a  few  hours, 
using  it  as  recommended  in  influenza ;  and  bronchitis,  pneu- 
monia, and  other  diseases  of  the  chest  and  throat  may  be 
entirely  averted  if  treated  in  time,  or  speedily  cured  if  resort 
to  the  remedy  may  have  been  delayed.  These,  however,  are 
acute  diseases,  and  the  medicine  must  be  used  in  sufficient 
doses  and  persevered  with,  as  I  have  explained  elsewhere. 
There  is  no  ailment  of  any  kind,  acute  or  chronic,  to  which 
it  is  not  applicable. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

PEDIGREE   OF   MICROBES,   AND    SUMMARY. 

MY  experiments  have  developed  many  points  of  interest 
in  the  history  of  microbes,  and  the  reader  will  be  glad  to 
know  more  of  a  subject  of  so  much  importance. 

The  part  which  micro-organisms  play  in  the  economy  of 
Nature  is  a  great  one,  and  it  is  quite  worth  while  to  look  at 
their  origin.  This  carries  us  back  almost  to  the  beginning  of 
life.  There  was  a  time  when  the  whole  of  organic  nature  on 
this  globe  consisted  entirely  of  these  little  bodies  and  of  their 
nearest  kindred  organizations.  The  length  of  that  period  in 
the  world's  history  has  been  estimated  at  hundreds  of  mil- 
lions of  years,  or  more  than  half  the  interval  since  the  earth 
assumed  its  present  form.  Then  they  probably  existed  ex- 
clusively in  the  waters. 

The  highest  forms  of  vegetation  in  those  early  periods 
were  the  tangles  or  sea-weeds,  such  as  are  found  in  the 
Sargossa  Sea  now.  No  insects  existed  then.  There  would 
have  been  no  sustenance  for  them,  for  there  were  no  land 
plants  nor  any  form  of  land  vegetation.  The  air  was  dense 
with  aqueous  vapor,  and  hot.  The  primeval  seas  must  have 
been  warm  too,  and  well  adapted  to  the  enormous  increase 
and  propagation  of  such  organisms. 

Among  animals  the  skull-less  fishes  were  the  highest.  Of 
these  only  one,  the  amphioxus,  remains.  This  little  creature, 
about  two  inches  long,  and  quite  translucent,  is  found  only  in 
Europe,  in  the  North,  Baltic,  and  the  Mediterranean  seas. 
But  insignificant  as  it  may  appear,  it  is  of  vast  importance  to 

216 


ECZEMA. 


MICROBES  FROM  OPHTHALMIA. 


PEDIGREE   OF  MICROBES,    AND   SUMMARY.  21 J 

the  biologist,  as  forming  a  link  between  the  vertebrate  and  in- 
vertebrate animals,  and  closing  up  a  space  that  long  existed 
in  the  chain  of  life  indicated  by  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  for 
the  amphioxus  was  discovered  not  many  years  ago.  It 
possesses  a  backbone  and  spinal  cord,  but  no  brain,  and  the 
circulation  is  caused  by  the  contraction  of  tubular  vessels, 
not  by  a  bulbular  heart. 

Simple  as  this  formation  is,  it  nevertheless  represents  the 
highest  form  of  animal  life  many  ages  after  organic  struc- 
tures had  begun  to  fill  the  world,  and  when  the  waters  were 
teeming  with  worms,  ciliated  larvae,  and  yet  more  primitive 
forms  that  were  destined,  after  myriads  of  years,  to  lead  to 
what  we  see  around  us  now.  There  was  no  life  on  land. 
Remains  of  the  organic  forms  of  those  far  remote  ages  are 
still  to  be  found,  in  Canada  especially,  but  the  soft  parts  of  the 
minutest  organisms  have  not  been  preserved,  and  precisely 
what  they  were  can  only  be  gleaned  by  analogy,  although 
there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  they  differed  from  the 
forms  of  the  present  day.  They  constituted  the  basis  of  the 
whole  of  organic  life  as  we  see  it  now,  and  it  is  interesting  to 
observe  how  they  originated.  They  must  have  come  from 
the  simplest  beginning,  and  Professor  Haeckel,  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Jena,  has  thrown  full  light  on  this  part  of  the  sub- 
ject by  actual  investigation,  first  at  Nice,  and  afterwards  at 
Gibraltar,  and  the  Canary  Islands. 

It  is  only  of  late  years  that  we  have  become  acquainted  with 
the  monera,  which  is  the  primitive  form  of  organic  life.  The 
most  remarkable  was  discovered  by  Huxley,  and  is  found  as 
far  as  twenty-four  thousand  feet  under  the  sea,  but  they  are 
abundant  in  fresh  water  also.  They  are  little  more  than 
roundish,  minute  accumulations  of  mucus-like  matter,  adher- 
ing sometimes  to  small  shells.  They  vary  in  color  from 
white  to  a  bright  red.  They  possess  no  organs,  but  they 
float  through  the  water  and  take  nourishment.  This  is  done 
in  a  remarkable  way.  When  food  becomes  necessary,  a 
number  of  fine  thread-like  arms  are  thrown  out  from  the  side, 
which  presently  enclose  the  minute  particle  that  serves  for 


2l8  MICROBES. 


food,  and  draw  it  towards  the  main  body,  into  which  it 
becomes  absorbed.  This  done,  the  threads  disappear.  These 
bodies  multiply  very  rapidly,  a  number  of  small  globules 
forming  in  the  anterior,  which  ere  long  burst  their  envelope, 
and  immediately  float  about  in  the  water,  and  attach  them- 
selves to  the  first  suitable  object  that  comes  in  their  way. 

The  bodies  of  these  micro-organisms  are  of  such  delicate 
construction  that  they  must  be  ever  changing  their  shape 
while  in  motion,  but  when  at  rest  they  are  merely  round  cel- 
lular formations,  no  differently  constituted  than  are  some 
organic  compounds  obtainable  in  the  laboratory  of  the 
chemist.  The  next  higher  form  differs  mainly  from  the 
monera  in  being  able  to  take  solid  particles  into  the  interior 
of  a  cell,  whereas  the  monera  obtains  nourishment  by  diffu- 
sion only.  But  it  also  multiplies  differently.  It  is  a  higher 
organization,  and  in  place  of  being  a  mere  shapeless  mass  of 
mucus,  it  is  enveloped  in  a  membrane,  and  is  therefore  a 
simple  cell  with  a  nucleus.  This  nucleus  gradually  divides 
into  two,  the  cell-wall  contracts  between  them,  and  thus  two 
separate  and  independent  bodies  are  formed.  They  take 
their  food  by  the  same  process  as  the  others. 

Advancing  another  step  we  approach  a  form  like  that  of 
several  of  the  microbes  of  the  human  body  and  disease. 
Some  of  them  are  simple  cells,  like  the  amoeba,  but  others 
more  resemble  the  whip-swimmers,  as  they  are  termed,  of 
this  third  development.  In  them  we  have  a  cell  with  a 
thread-like  extension  at  one  end,  which  gives  them  some- 
what the  appearance  of  certain  forms  of  microbe,  especially 
those  known  as  spirillae  and  bacilli.  The  whip-swimmers  are 
found  also  in  great  abundance  in  both  salt  and  fresh  water, 
moving  about  by  means  of  the  thread-like  process  at  their 
extremity.  Some  are  provided  with  fringes  or  cilia,  which 
further  facilitate  their  movements,  but  in  the  forms  which 
are  found  in  man,  and  those  producing  disease,  these  fringes 
are  usually  absent.  The  whip-swimmers  are  supposed  to  play 
a  chief  part  in  producing  that  beautiful  phenomenon  common 
in  all  warm  latitudes  described  as  the  phosphorescence  of  the 


•Air. 


FROM    ULCER    ON  THE  ELBOW. 


MICROBES   FROM    ULCER  ON   LEG. 
(Milk  Leg.) 


PEDIGREE   OF  MICROBES,   AND   SUMMARY.  2ig 

sea,  and  in  fresh  water  producing  the  green  slime  of  stagnant 
pools.  All  these  organizations,  so  closely  allied  to  the  microbe 
with  which  we  have  to  deal,  do  not  live  in  the  water.  There 
are  some  forms  at  least  which  exist  on  dry  land,  and  then 
they  probably  exercise  fully  as  important  functions  as  those 
in  the  water.  Some  are  more  closely  allied  to  animals  and 
some  to  plants,  the  difference  being  based  on  the  presence  of 
nitrogen  or  lime  in  their  structure. 

The  skeleton  or  the  solid  scaffolding  of  the  body  in  most 
genuine  plants  consists  of  a  substance  called  cellulose,  devoid 
of  nitrogen,  but  secreted  by  the  nitrogenous  cell-substance  or 
protoplasm.  In  most  genuine  animals  the  skeleton  consists 
of  either  nitrogenous  combinations  or  of  calcareous  earth. 
Sea-weeds  or  tangles  existed  in  primitive  times  with  the 
monera,  but  the  theory  is  now  generally  accepted  that  fungi 
arose  out  of  the  more  simple  form.  The  lowest  fungi  are 
those  which  produce  fermentation,  and  it  is  not  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  they  were  a  development  from  sea-weeds, 
although  they  exhibit  a  very  close  relationship  to  the  lowest 
algse. 

Not  long  ago  a  person  writing  to  one  of  the  newspapers 
alluded  to  microbes  as  animals,  and  the  editor,  in  a  foot-note, 
said  that  that  was  an  error,  and  that  they  are  in  reality  algje. 
Both  views  were  wrong,  and  the  true  relationship  of  these 
remarkable  bodies  is  as  I  have  described.  There  are  no 
fossil  remains  of  them. 

Fungi  differ  from  all  other  vegetable  organizations,  as  I 
hinted  previously.  Other  plants  live  upon  inorganic  food,  and 
produce  protoplasm  by  the  combination  of  water,  ammonia, 
and  carbonic  acid,  whereas  fungi  live  upon  organic  matter 
and  are  genuine  parasites.  Some  even  propagate  in  a  sexual 
manner,  and  for  that  reason  have  been  placed  by  a  few 
biologists  in  the  animal  kingdom,  but  the  distinction  is  not 
universally  acknowledged,  and  they  still  hold  their  place  in 
the  vegetable  kingdom.  In  the  production  of  diseased  con- 
ditions the  fungus  is  no  less  active  than  the  yet  more  simple 
forms — in  fact,  it  is  probably  more  active,  since  it  seems  to 


220  MICROBES. 


possess  a  greater  power  in  promoting  fermentation.  The 
exact  rationale  of  this  process  has  not,  so  far  as  I  am  aware, 
ever  been  explained,  but  when  we  know  the  peculiar  differ- 
ence that  separates  a  fungus  from  other  plants  it  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  form  a  theory.  Take,  for  example,  the  microbe  of 
intermittent  fever.  This  circulates  in  the  blood.  It  lives 
upon  the  blood  corpuscles,  destroying  their  vitality  and  form, 
appropriating  oxygen  and  exhaling  carbonic  acid.  The 
older  chemists  thought  that  it  was  a  mere  effect  of  contact, 
but  that  idea  must  be  laid  aside  in  view  of  the  certainty  that 
a  chemical  decomposition  takes  place,  and  that  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  properties  of  the  blood  is  really  due  to  that 
cause. 

The  extreme  minuteness  of  these  micro-organisms  is  a 
feature  that  must  always  be  borne  in  mind.  Not  only  are 
they  small,  often  beyond  reach  of  any  but  the  highest  micro- 
scopic powers,  but  their  tissues  are  extremely  delicate  so  as 
to  render  them  imperceptible  sometimes  to  all  but  the  most 
practised  eyes.  For  this  reason  it  is  extremely  difficult  to 
meet  with  them  when  they  do  not  afford  a  sufficient  resist- 
ance to  light  to  enable  us  to  obtain  photographs  or  any 
natural  delineation. 

And  it  was  this  difficulty  which  I  had  to  overcome  in  pro- 
ducing most  of  the  plates  that  appear  in  this  work.  No  at- 
tempt had  ever  before  been  made  to  convey  by  means  of 
such  illustrations  to  the  general  public  an  idea  of  what 
microbes  are,  and  when  it  is  remembered  that  they  are  so 
minute  and  so  translucent  as  scarcely  to  cast  a  shadow, 
the  reason  may  be  understood.  So-called  engravings  of 
microbes  of  la  grippe,  for  instance,  and  other  diseases,  which 
have  appeared  in  the  papers,  are  purely  the  work  of  some- 
body's imagination.  They  bear  no  resemblance  whatever  to 
the  reality. 

This  peculiarity  does  not  affect  the  vitality  of  microbes. 
Minute  and  delicate  though  they  are,  they  are  extremely 
tenacious  of  life.  They  cannot  be  destroyed  readily.  When 
my  factories  were  first  established  I  had  abundant  oppor- 


€ 


L 


MICROBES  FROM  A  HOLLOW  TOOTH. 


*•"  A 

** 


MICROBES  FROM  THE  TEETH.     INFLAMED  GUMS. 


PEDIGREE   OF  MICROBES,   AND   SUMMARY.  221 

tunity  to  make  a  collection  of  numerous  forms  of  microbe. 
My  patients  brought  me  bottles  of  matter,  for  examination, 
in  a  state  of  fermentation,  and  sometimes  I  discovered  in  one 
of  them  as  many  as  from  six  to  ten  varieties,  showing  to  me 
conclusively  that  that  person  had  as  many  forms  of  disease, 
while  the  patient  may  have  been  treated  for  but  one  ailment 
by  his  doctor.  Sometimes  I  received  matter  from  the  stom- 
ach of  a  patient  immediately  after  he  had  taken  his  medicine. 
This  I  usually  preserved  for  the  purpose  of  learning  whether 
the  medicine  would  stop  the  fermentation.  I  kept  the  mat- 
ter in  carefully  stopped  bottles  sometimes  for  twelve  months, 
and  invariably  I  found  that  the  fermentation  continued. 
The  microbes  were  not  killed,  but  they  went  on  multiplying 
throughout  the  whole  time,  showing  that  the  medicine  that 
had  been  given  was  utterly  useless  to  destroy  the  cause  of 
disease.  Physicians  are  well  aware  of  the  ineffectiveness  of 
many  of  their  remedies,  and  they  are  willing  to  acknowledge 
among  themselves  that  the  only  really  powerful  drugs  in 
battling  with  microbes  are  fatal  also  to  the  patient.  Of  these 
the  principal  are  corrosive  sublimate  and  carbolic  acid,  but 
they  must  be  used  in  considerable  strength.  Strong  alcohol 
has  no  effect  on  dried  microbes,  but,  especially  if  used  in  its 
fullest  strength,  it  is  a  powerful  agent  when  the  germs  are  in 
a  moistened  condition.  Boracic  acid,  once  thought  of  so 
much  value,  has  been  shown  to  possess  no  action  whatever, 
after  ten  days'  trial  the  germs  resisting  it  most  effectually. 
Iodine  has  been  tried  for  forty-eight  hours,  and  found  also 
to  produce  no  effect.  Chloride  of  zinc,  oil  of  turpentine, 
thymol,  and  eucalyptol  have  yielded  similar  negative  results. 
Ointments  of  iodoform  and  iodol  are  equally  ineffectual. 
The  strongest  iodoform  simply  retarded  the  development  of 
microbes  after  twelve  hours'  exposure.  It  did  not  kill  them. 
Hot  water  does  not  destroy  them,  unless  it  be  raised  to  near 
the  boiling  temperature.  Permanganate  of  potash  has  been 
recommended,  but  the  effect  here  is  curious.  Instead  of  the 
salt  killing  the  microbe,  the  microbe  decomposes  the  per- 
manganate and  renders  it  ineffectual.  Peroxide  of  hydrogen 


222  MICROBES. 


is  uncertain,  and  at  the  best  produces  very  little  effect,  and 
chlorate  of  potash  is,  for  all  practical  purposes,  useless. 

In  like  manner,  physicians  admit,  as  the  teaching  of  ex- 
periment, that  oil  of  mustard,  arsenious  acid,  and  even  the 
much  vaunted  salicylic  acid,  are  quite  unreliable  and  ineffi- 
cient. It  comes,  in  fact,  to  this,  that  the  three  most  power- 
ful agents  used  by  the  doctors  are  carbolic  acid,  corrosive 
sublimate,  and  strong  alcohol.  But  how  can  the  body  be 
saturated  with  either  of  them  ?  One  sixtieth  of  a  grain  is  a 
dose  of  corrosive  sublimate,  yet,  to  destroy  the  cause  of  a 
disease,  it  is  necessary  to  reach  throughout  all  the  tissues, 
and  long  before  that  point  were  reached  the  patient  would 
be  dead. 

I  wish  to  avoid  conveying  the  impression  to  even  the 
most  unsophisticated  reader  that  I  claim  any  originality  in 
attributing  disease  to  the  presence  of  microbes.  That  view 
is  fully  accepted  by  the  medical  profession.  The  difference 
is  that,  whereas  physicians  attribute  only  a  few  diseases  to 
this  cause,  I  aver  that  it  is  the  origin  of  all.  Every  year,  too, 
adds  to  the  doctors'  list,  and  zymotic  ailments  are  gradually 
becoming  more  numerous.  Even  in  diseases  like  smallpox, 
whooping-cough,  and  measles,  where  the  special  microbe  has 
not  been  absolutely  identified  in  the  blood,  its  existence  is 
admitted.  In  this  way  the  whole  subject  has  received  atten- 
tion, and  many  points  of  interest  and  practical  value  have 
been  obtained. 

Some  forms  of  microbes  have  the  power  of  producing 
spores,  and  these  are  more  capable  of  resisting  antiseptics 
than  are  the  fully  developed  germs.  Diseases,  where  this 
form  of  bacillus  exists,  are  consequently  more  difficult  to 
cure,  and  it  is  more  than  probable  that  smallpox  comes  in 
this  category.  Experiments  instituted  by  Professor  Koch 
for  the  German  Imperial  Board  of  Health  are  among  the 
most  important  that  bear  upon  the  resistance  of  these  organ- 
isms, and  the  effects  of  various  agents.  It  created  no  little 
surprise  among  physicians  when  Koch  reported  that  many 
of  the  most  popular  and,  as  was  supposed,  the  most  power- 


PEDIGREE   OF  MICROBES,   AND   SUMMARY.  22$ 

ful  antiseptics  or  germicides  were,  in  fact,  of  no  use  at  all. 
Carbolic  acid  restrained  their  growth,  but  unless  used  in  very 
powerful  form,  it  was  much  less  efficacious  in  destroying  their 
vitality.  A  one-per-cent.  solution  required  fifteen  days  in 
which  to  kill  them,  and  then  only  when  they  were  kept  sub- 
merged in  the  fluid  the  whole  time.  It  is  remarkable,  too, 
that,  when  the  carbolic  acid  was  mixed  with  alcohol,  it  had 
no  disinfecting  influence  at  all.  Bisulphide  of  carbon  had  no 
effect  upon  them  until  a  temperature  of  176°  was  reached, 
which,  of  course,  is  far  beyond  any  practical  temperature  for 
the  body.  Bacteria  that  are  free  from  spores  may  be 
destroyed  at  212°,  the  boiling-point  of  water,  but  spore-bear- 
ing microbes  will  resist  280°.  Excepting  the  germ  of  yellow- 
fever,  their  bodies  are  proof  against  cold  as  well  as  against 
heat.  The  microbe  of  typhus  withstands  a  considerable 
degree  of  cold,  thus  indicating  a  typical  difference  between 
that  and  yellow-fever. 

I  have  succeeded  in  propagating  microbes  in  different 
fluids  in  which  some  of  these  medicines,  as  carbolic  and 
muriatic  acids,  were  mixed.  Hydrochloric  acid  is  indeed 
present  in  the  stomach  during  digestion,  where,  being  in 
small  quantities,  it  certainly  does  not  destroy  fermentation. 
I  have  added  to  my  bottles  of  microbe  culture  as  much  as 
twenty-five  per  cent,  of  mercury,  and  even  with  that  degree 
of  strength  it  required  from  three  to  ten  hours  to  kill  them. 
All  this  line  of  experimenting  convinced  me  that  I  have  to 
use  large  doses  of  medicine,  and  to  carry  it  through  all  the 
tissues,  if  I  would  destroy  the  microbes  of  disease  ;  but  with 
the  medicines  that  the  doctors  prescribe,  this  cannot  be  done, 
and  with  the  small  doses  they  are  forced  to  give,  nothing  but 
a  very  imperfect  result  is  possible.  I  often  found  the  con- 
tents of  bottles  which  I  carried  about  with  me  to  be  dried 
up.  Nothing  remained  but  a  dry,  dusty  substance,  which 
would  break  up  like  the  ashes  of  a  cigar.  When  I  added  a 
little  distilled  water  to  this,  and  allowed  it  to  stand  for  a  few 
days,  the  microbes  would  be  alive  again,  multiplying  as 
rapidly  as  before.  Even  if  I  had  added  alcohol  to  them  in 


224  MICROBES. 


the  dry  state,  they  would  not  have  been  killed.  Every 
housekeeper  knows  that  yeast  cakes  may  be  kept  dry  for 
months,  and  that,  as  soon  as  they  are  moistened  and  placed 
under  favorable  circumstances,  with  a  sufficient  temperature, 
they  induce  fermentation.  This  is  nothing  more  than  the 
yeast  plant,  which  is  a  fungus  or  microbe,  revivifying  and 
increasing  and  growing,  feeding  for  the  time  on  the  material 
in-  which  it  is  placed,  and,  like  an  animal,  giving  out  carbonic 
acid. 

Some  organisms  cease  to  exist  when  the  process  of  putre- 
faction to  which  they  gave  rise  has  attained  to  a  certain 
excess,  as  if  the  results  of  the  chemical  changes  were  them- 
selves sufficient  to  destroy  life.  But  this  condition  is  be- 
yond my  province  to  notice  except  as  a  matter  of  interest. 
Disease  germs  in  a  state  of  activity  sufficient  to  reproduce 
disease  may  be  conveyed,  as  already  explained,  directly 
from  the  body  or  discharges,  including  the  exhalation  from 
the  skin,  also  from  the  clothes  or  bedding,  or  through  the 
air  or  articles  of  food,  or  by  dust  that  settles  on  the  walls  or 
floor,  or  from  the  soil,  or  through  defects  in  sewerage.  Fire 
is  the  only  absolutely  perfect  disinfectant,  but  other  means 
will  suffice  if  accompanied  by  proper  precautions. 

From  what  I  have  previously  said  it  is  easy  to  see  how 
germs  may  be  taken  into  the  system  from  the  atmosphere. 
Those  ordinarily  there  may  not  be  productive  of  disease,  but 
that  is  of  no  practical  import.  I  have  shown  the  danger 
arising  from  the  too  prevalent  habit  of  expectoration.  But 
if  we  pass  from  out-doors  into  the  sick-room  it  is  greatly  in- 
creased. A  consumptive  patient  or  any  person  suffering 
with  diseases  such  as  scarlet-fever,  measles,  etc.,  may  be  the 
means  of  allowing  microbes  to  get  into  the  bed  coverings. 
This  will  dry  up  and  remain  there  until  disturbed,  when  im- 
mediately they  float  about  the  air  and  may  pass  into  the 
lungs  of  other  individuals.  This  again  indicates  two  points 
that  are  not  sufficiently  attended  to.  One  is  the  folly,  before 
referred  to,  of  having  draperies,  curtains,  and  hangings  about 
the  sick-chamber ;  and  the  other  the  mistake  that  is  often 


PEDIGREE   OF  MICROBES,    AND   SUMMARY.  22$ 

made  in  the  use  of  disinfectants  .after  illness,  since  it  is 
shown  that  germs  in  a  dry  state  will  resist  antiseptics  that 
would  be  effectual  if  they  were  merely  moistened.  It  is  for 
this  reason  that  chlorine  and  sulphurous  acid  gas  so  fre- 
quently fail  to  produce  the  effect  desired.  Thus  people  are 
often  very  unnecessarily  surprised  when,  after  what  they 
think  has  been  a  disinfecting  process  cholera,  yellow-fever, 
scarlet-fever,  or  some  disease  of  that  kind  will  break  out 
again  often  with  more  virulence  than  before. 

If  meat  that  has  been  hung  a  few  days  in  unfavorable 
weather,  until  an  odor  of  fermentation  can  be  discovered,  be 
placed  under  the  microscope,  microbes  may  be  detected  pro- 
ducing fermentation  and  putrefaction ;  and  thus  the  nose 
becomes  an  organ  to  warn  its  owner  against  a  danger  which 
the  eyes  fail  to  discover.  I  have  no  doubt  that  consider- 
able sickness  is  caused  by  the  recent  custom  of  eating  meat 
improperly  cooked.  Doctors  sometimes  order  their  patients 
to  eat  raw  meat  and  to  drink  fresh  blood.  In  these  in- 
stances the  patients  take  nourishment  into  the  system,  and 
they  also  take  the  germs  of  disease.  We  all  know  the  ter- 
rible effects  produced  by  trichinae  that  infest  raw  pork  ;  how, 
when  taken  into  the  stomach,  they  soon  develop  throughout 
the  whole  system,  and  the  victim  soon  dies  in  indescribable 
torture.  Persons  who  take  raw  meat,  or  eat  underdone  meat, 
are  liable  to  a  similar  evil,  if  in  a  less  degree.  Microbes  are 
not  killed  except  by  a  very  high  degree  of  heat,  a  degree 
much  higher  than  that  which  enters  into  the  substance  of 
meat  that  is  insufficiently  cooked. 

A  temperature  of  212°  will,  as  I  have  stated  already,  suffice 
to  destroy  many  germs,  but  there  are  some  that  survive  a 
higher  degree  of  heat  ^unless  it  is  continued  for  a  considera- 
ble time.  Epidemics  are  certainly  conveyed  in  milk,  but 
wherever  the  milk  is  carefully  and  sufficiently  boiled  no 
disease  is  ever  induced  by  it.  A  case  is  on  record  where  a 
number  of  persons  were  seized  wijh  a  severe  attack  of  chol- 
eraic diarrhoea  after  partaking  of  a  boiled  ham  at  a  public 
lunch.  It  was  proved  that  the  meat  contained  numbers  of 


226  MICROBES. 


spore-bearing  microbes,  which  are  always  difficult  to  kill,  and 
that"  it  had  been  insufficiently  cooked.  In  another  instance, 
similar  results  followed  after  a  number  of  persons  had  eaten 
of  well-cooked  pork.  But  in  that  case  the  micro-organisms 
had  taken  their  origin  in  the  food  after  it  had  been  cooked, 
a  fact  which  again  conveyed  a  useful  lesson. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  salting  meat  has  the  effect 
of  destroying  the  microbes.  Cholera  bacilli  and  some  other 
disease  germs  are  destroyed  by  salt,  but  the  bacilli  of  infec- 
tious diseases  of  animals  are  hardly  affected  by  it,  and  these 
are  the  most  important.  Meat  containing  the  germs  of 
tubercle  can  with  great  difficulty  be  freed  from  them.  These 
germs  will  live  in  strong  brine  sometimes  for  months,  a  fact 
which  cannot  be  too  clearly  remembered  by  anybody  who 
may  suppose  that  salted  and  corned  meats  must  be  free  from 
germs  of  first  origin.  Even  cholera  microbes  require  a  very 
strong  solution  of  salt  to  destroy  them. 

In  freezing,  the  microbes  of  meat  are  not  destroyed ;  they 
simply  remain  dormant  and  cease  propagating,  as  they  do  in 
dry  dust,  but  as  soon  as  the  meat  is  thawed  they  begin  again 
to  do  their  work  ;  they  increase  and  multiply  ;  the  process  of 
fermentation  begins  and  that  of  putrefaction  soon  follows. 
It  is  extremely  difficult  to  kill  them.  Even  where  sulphurous 
acid  gas  is  used,  several  hours  become  necessary  in  which  to 
continue  the  process,  and  all  atmospheric  air  must  be  care- 
fully exclude'd.  The  sulphur  gas  must  have  access  to  every 
crack  and  crevice,  for  if  but  a  vestige  of  microbe  life  remains 
it  will  develop  and  the  fumigation  or  disinfecting  process 
will  have  been  in  vain.  To  say  that  microbes  may  be  dissi- 
pated or  destroyed  by  firing  cannon,  building  fires,  or  spray- 
ing something  into  the  air,  is  simply'  a  result  of  ignorance. 
I  have  experimented  in  that  direction  and  can  prove  my 
assertion. 

Microbes  are  known  to  exist  in  sulphuric  acid  and  in  many 
other  powerful  poisons,  but  they  are  not  of  a  kind  that 
would  produce  disease  in  the  human  body,  because  they 
could  not  find  a  suitable  nidus  there.  It  shows,  however, 


PEDIGREE   OF  MICROBES,   AND   SUMMARY.  22/ 

what  they  may  be,  and  how  capable  they  are  of  sustaining 
life  under  conditions  where  it  seems  impossible.  If  mi- 
crobes from  the  body  be  placed  in  sulphuric  acid,  they  are 
of  course  instantly  consumed. 

The  micro-organisms  are  universal.  That  fact  will  have 
been  gleaned  from  what  has  gone  before,  when  I  have  shown 
that  they  exist  twenty  thousand  feet  under  the  ocean,  as  well 
as  in  the  air,  and  in  almost  all  forms  of  organic  life.  If  all  were 
detrimental  to  the  human  body,  we  could  not  live  for  twenty- 
four  hours.  We  inhale  them  with  our  breath,  take  them 
into  the  system  with  our  food,  and  can  barely  handle  any 
thing  without  coming  in  contact  with  them.  Some  are  even 
healthful.  The  yeast  plant  is  one  of  them,  and  the  fungi 
that  we  have  in  wine,  beer,  and  vinegar  are  not  injurious. 
It  is  only  disease-producing  germs  that  we  have  to  combat, 
and  those  which  find  a  suitable  nidus  in  the  human  body 
for  propagation. 

Sometimes  doctors  have  told  me  that  in  destroying  disease 
germs  we  destroy  also  microbes  that  may  be  useful.  To 
that  I  can  confidently  reply  that  I  have  destroyed  disease 
microbes  in  myself  and  in  thousands  of  other  persons,  and 
that  if  the  good  ones  have  gone  too  they  have  never  been 
missed  ;  in  truth,  they  are  forming  in  our  bodies  every  day 
and  all  the  time.  But  these  are  injured  by  the  others.  An 
unhealthy  tree  does  not  produce  healthy  fruit,  neither  does 
a  constitutionally  unhealthy  person  produce  healthy  off- 
spring. His  vitality  is  destroyed  by  another  microbe,  which 
is  out  of  place  and  dangerous.  But  get  rid  of  the  disease 
germs,  and  Nature  will  supply  wholesome  ones  that  build  up 
the  system  and  produce  vigorous  health  and  life-giving 
powers.  When  a  person  tells  me  that  he  suffers  from  nervous 
irritability  or  depression,  feels  weak,  and  wanting  in  energy, 
is  unable  to  bring  himself  to  his  work,  and  is  generally  in- 
competent, I  know  that  he  must  take  microbe  killer,  which 
will  destroy  disease  germs  and  leave  the  useful  ones  to  be 
reproduced  and  do  any  beneficial  work  for  which  they  are  in- 
tended. This  can  only  be  done  when  the  body  has  been  built 


228  MICROBES. 


up  and  the  whole  system  is  strengthened,  so  that  the  blood, 
purified  and  enriched,  shall  circulate  freely  and  impart  vigor 
and  tone  to  the  sensations  as  well  as  to  the  body.  For  with 
improved  circulation  the  whole  nervous  system  is  strength- 
ened. Irritability  and  extreme  sensitiveness  disappear.  The 
nerves  perform  their  legitimate  functions  and  the  individual 
is  brought  up  to  a  standard  of  normal  health  such  as  the 
body  is  fitted  for.  Water  that  is  not  kept  in  motion  becomes 
foul  and  stagnant.  Fungi  grow  in  it,  and  fermentation  and 
putrefaction  are  encouraged.  And  so  it  is  with  the  blood. 
Directly  it  ceases  to  circulate  freely  we  have  an  indication 
that  there  is  something  wrong,  that  it  contains  something 
that  ought  not  to  be  there.  -  When  it  is  well  nourished  and 
clear,  so  that  it  circulates  freely,  no  palpitation  or  nervous- 
ness or  any  pain  will  worry  us.  Under  that  condition  we 
cannot  be  sick  or  ailing.  The  blood  is  the  life.  If  we  can 
keep  it  always  free  from  microbes  and  impurities,  and  in  a 
condition  where  it  furnishes  sustenance  to  the  tissues  as  it 
should  do,  we  may  prolong  our  lives  till  old  age  ends  them. 
Children  and  young  people  who  are  free  from  hereditary 
trouble  die,  as  a  consequence  of  the  ignorance  of  the  medical 
faculty,  who  mistake  or  misunderstand  the  cause  of  the 
disease,  and  consequently  err  in  providing  a  remedy. 

With  the  microbe  killer  near  at  hand  sickness  is  shorn  of 
all  its  terrors.  We  need  not  fear  it,  for  the  remedy  is  with 
us.  We  can  stop  it  at  once  and  renew  ourselves  again,  even 
as  a  house  may  be  painted  again  and  again  to  preserve  it 
from  fungi,  which,  of  course,  cannot  attack  it  as  readily  as 
though  it  were  not  painted.  Precisely  the  same  thing  occurs 
in  the  body  when  the  microbe  killer  is  applied,  as  must  be 
evident  to  those  who  have  followed  me  through  my  descrip- 
tion of  the  cures  I  have  effected  in  chronic  diseases.  Noth- 
ing is  more  simple  than  to  cure  disease  when  it  first  begins, 
provided  we  deal  with  it  intelligently  and  according  to  the 
directions  and  principles  that  I  have  laid  down. 

Any  one  who  goes  carefully  through  the  foregoing  pages 
will  have  to  admit  that  I  have  set  down  nothing  which  is 


PEDIGREE   OF  MICROBES,    AND   SUMMARY.  229 

incapable  of  proof.  I  deal  in  no  guesswork,  empiricism,  or 
theory,  but  in  hard  facts  ;  and  these,  I  think,  I  have  made 
so  clear  and  so  convincing  that,  in  the  face  of  them,  medical 
science  cannot  stand  before  my  discovery.  If  people  would 
not  be  content  to  believe  all  that  they  hear  and  read,  but 
would  use  their  own  reason  and  judgment,  they  would 
assuredly  realize  that  we  were  not  born  to  endure  pain  and 
misery,  to  lead  a  wretched  existence  without  energy  or  com- 
fort, to  crawl,  as  it  were,  through  the  world  and  then  to  sink 
into  everlasting  perdition,  after  making  everybody  around 
us  miserable. 

The  world  is  very  much  what  people  make  it.  Each  of 
us  is  more  or  less  the  victim  of  circumstances.  Perhaps  if 
I  had  never  been  sick  I  should  never  have  discovered  the 
microbe  killer.  Very  often,  too,  characters  are  formed  by 
a  long  series  of  circumstances  over  which  the  individual  may 
have  had  no  control,  and  yet,  if  more  people  would  exercise 
common-sense  and  intelligently  use  the  abilities  that  they 
possess,  very  much  trouble,  disappointment,  and  pain  would 
be  prevented,  and  very  many  rogues,  who  now  subsist  by 
the  ignorance  or  stupidity  of  the  people,  would  be  forced 
into  earning  an  honest  livelihood.  The  public  faith  and 
credulity  about  any  adventurer  who  dabbles  with  drugs  and 
promises,  in  specious  advertisements,  to  cure  some  form  of 
nervous  debility  or  disease  are  astounding.  I  do  not  know 
of  one  honest  man  who  is  engaged  in  that  kind  of  busi- 
ness. All  of  them  live  by  plunder  and  deception  and 
trickery,  and  they  do  so  because  the  people  they  go  among 
will  not  take  the  trouble  to  think  for  themselves.  They 
invite  misfortune.  It  does  not  come  to  them  unsought. 
They  lose  their  money  through  their  own  folly,  and  they 
receive  no  relief,  because  the  people  who  promised  to  give 
it  them  are  neither  able  nor  willing  to  do  so.  They  only 
want  all  the  plunder  that  they  can  get  by  dishonest  means 
without  falling  inside  the  pale  of  the  law. 

Man  had  better  never  have  been  created  if  he  was  to  be 
destined  to  everlasting  misery  and  wretchedness.  People's 


230  MICROBES. 


brains  are  not  of  equal  value  or  equal  force,  but  everybody 
has  at  least  one,  and,  such  as  it  is,  he  should  make  the  best 
use  of  it.  It  must  be  a  very  bad  one  indeed  if  it  cannot  be 
made  available  to  do  a  little  thinking,  if  only  just  enough  to 
take  care  of  the  body  that  it  is  attached  to.  The  man  who, 
unafflicted  by  disease  or  some  natural  debility,  cannot  take 
care  of  himself  can  hardly  expect  that  other  people  will  take 
care  of  him.  People  should  not  be  led  away  by  every  charla- 
tan who  jumps  up  before  them  and  talks  ;  but  as  long  as  the 
world  lasts  there  will  probably  be  fools  in  it,  and  fools  are  a 
godsend  to  rogues.  There  is  a  fascination  in  being  hum- 
bugged. Make  it  known  to  the  world  that  you  are  going  to 
do  some  impossible  thing,  and  the  world  will  pay  money  to 
come  in  and  see  you  do  it,  although  well  understanding  all 
the  while  that  the  thing  cannot  be  done.  It  is  a  part  pos- 
sibly of  the  perversity  of  human  nature,  which  in  practice 
refuses  to  realize  that  talking  about  something  and  giving 
proof  of  it  are  two  very  different  things.  There  are  hundreds 
and  thousands  of  men,  aye  and  women  too,  who  have  a 
great  deal  to  say  about  disease  and  medicine  who  have  the 
stamp  of  impostors  branded  on  their  face.  It  is  not  enough 
that  a  man  shall  promise  to  cure  disease,  let  him  give  practi- 
cal demonstration  of  his  ability  to  do  what  he  says.  Until 
he  has  done  that,  he  is  unworthy  of  credence  or  confidence. 
It  is  nothing  that  he  writes  books  and  calls  it  science,  and 
asks  the  people  to  pay  for  it  as  such.  He  must  show  by 
actual  proof  that  it  is  not  the  outpouring  of  worse  than  un- 
pardonable ignorance.  Genuine  science  gives  facts  and  proof 
that  they  are  facts,  so  that  people  who  will  take  the  trouble 
may  judge  for  themselves  and  be  satisfied. 

That  is  the  principle  that  has  actuated  me  in  my  discovery. 
I  religiously  abstain  from  making  any  •  promise  which  I 
cannot  fulfil.  I  have  stated  nothing  as  a  fact  which  I  can- 
not prove.  I  have  given  honestly  and  as  plainly  as  possible, 
so  that  all  may  understand,  the  whole  history  of  my  discovery, 
how  I  came  to  make  it,  and  what  it  has  done,  and  there  is 
not  a  single  assertion  throughout  this  book  bearing  upon  the 


J 


SINGLE  TRICHINA  SPIRALIS  IN   FLESH. 
(Magnified  with  £  inch  objective.) 


TRICHINA  SPIRALIS. 


PEDIGREE   OF  MICROBES,   AND   SUMMARY.  2$l 

Microbe  Killer  which  is  not  absolutely  true.  But  to  put  the 
whole  matter  as  concisely  as  possible,  the  facts  which  I  am 
especially  prepared  to  prove  are  these  : 

I.  That  I  have,  by  studying  Nature  carefully,  discovered  a 
preparation  which  is  capable  of  curing  any  disease, 
and  therefore  is  calculated  to  prolong  life. 
II.  That  this  preparation  is  entirely  harmless  to  the  human 
system,  but  death  to  microbes. 

III.  That  all  diseases  that  have  come  under  my  notice  have 

been  cured  by  this  Microbe  Killer,  not  even  excepting 
the  relief  and  possible  cure  of  that  most  dreaded  of 
all  affections,  leprosy. 

IV.  That  in  the  short  space  of  two  years  I  have  made  a 

reputation  for  my  medicine  such  as  no  discovery  has 
heretofore  gained. 
V.  That  no  medicine  or  preparation  of  the  kind  has  had  so 

many  imitators  as  this  Microbe  Killer. 

VI.  That  it  is  in  consequence  of  my  success  that  some 
members  of  the  medical  profession  decry  me  and  de- 
nounce me  as  surpassing  all  in  the  pretentious  charac- 
ter of  my  claims. 

I  stand  upon  these  six  statements,  and  I  ask  the  people  to 
whom  the  discovery  is  submitted  to  investigate  for  them- 
selves, and  to  be  satisfied,  as  they  must  then  be,  that  every 
thing  I  affirm  can  be  substantiated  and  is  sound. 


APPENDIX. 


CONCERNING   THE   PLATES. 

EXCEPT  where  otherwise  stated  all  the  illustrations  of 
microbes  are  made  from  plates  obtained  from  results  of  my 
own  microscopic  investigation,  but  under  extreme  difficulty, 
arising,  as  explained  in  the  text,  from  the  great  translucency 
of  the  bodies  of  these  micro-organisms.  They  are  best  ex- 
amined by  a  reading-  or  large  magnifying-glass.  Some  per- 
sons find  them  well  developed  if  looked  at  through  an 
ordinary  opera-glass  reversed,  the  plate  being  held  six  or 
eight  inches  away  until  a  focus  is  obtained.  Whatever 
appears  blurred  or  indistinct  to  the  naked  eye  will  thus  be 
brought  out  more  distinctly,  and  will  better  resemble  the 
photographs  obtained  directly  from  the  microscope. 

The  white  threads  or  spots  are  chains  or  clumps  of  mi- 
crobes, in  fact  single  specimens  have  defied  all  efforts  thus 
far  to  develop  them  by  this  method. 

Micrographs  are  generally  made  with  an  eighth  of  an  inch 
homogeneous  immersion  objective.  Taken  with  one  of  an 
eighteenth  of  an  inch,  and  a  four-foot  camera  and  tube  such 
as  I  used,  they  would  be  magnified  from  five  to  six  thousand 
times.  This,  however,  is  only  an  approximate  estimate, 
because  the  slightest  vibration  would  alter  the  magnitude 
considerably. 

So  far  as  I  am  aware  microbes  have  never  been  photo- 
graphed either  in  Europe  or  America,  all  illustrations  being 
sketches  made  from  the  microscopic  field,  and  necessarily 

233 


234  APPENDIX. 


more  or  less  imperfect.  The  general  belief  has  been  that 
they  cannot  be  taken  by  microphotography,  and  my  earlier 
experiences  led  me  to  the  belief  that  that  was  true.  I  failed 
for  several  weeks.  If  I  used  too  high  a  power  I  lost  the 
light,  and  if  I  used  too  low  a  power  I  lost  the  microbe.  But 
perseverance  won  the  day  at  last.  I  worked  and  experi- 
mented persistently,  and  in  that  way  the  difficulties  were 
overcome.  All  the  plates  lack  definition  more  or  less,  but 
they  represent  the  first  that  have  ever  been  done,  and  in 
that  way  they  are  of  value.  Future  development  of  my 
process  may  possibly  lead  to  more  satisfactory  results. 


[While  pursuing  my  inquiries  I  have  met  with  various 
notes  bearing  upon  the  details  of  my  investigations.  Many 
of  these  are  of  interest  as  strengthening  my  views,  or  con- 
trasting with  the  results  of  my  treatment  of  disease ;  and  a 
few  of  them  I  have  deemed  to  be  of  sufficient  moment  to  sub- 
mit to  my  readers,  but  in  order  not  to  break  the  uniformity 
of  my  previous  narrative,  I  have  preferred  to  collect  them 
under  the  form  of  an  appendix.  They  thus  appear  as  sup- 
plementary to  the  text,  but  they  will  be  found  none  the  less 
instructive.  I  shall  also  avail  myself  of  the  opportunity 
which  this  arrangement  affords  me  to  demonstrate  the  kind 
of  antagonism  with  which  my  discovery  has  been  met.] 


THE  RELATION  OF  MICROBES  TO  DISEASE. 

A  remarkable  paper  was  read  last  year  on  this  subject 
before  the  American  Academy  of  Medicine,  by  Dr.  Samuel 
N.  Nelson,  of  Boston,  and  the  Council  deemed  it  of  sufficient 
importance  to  select  it  for  publication  throughout  the  coun. 
try.  Some  extracts  are  as  follows  : 

The  role  of  the  micro-organisms  called  bacteria  is  at  present 
probably  occupying  the  attention  of  more  scientific  men  than  any 
other  subject  in  modern  science.  Great  numbers  of  observers 


APPENDIX.  235 


are  at  work  on  both  continents  in  the  solution  of  the  germ  theory 
of  disease.  Comparatively  unknown  till  within  a  few  years,  on 
account  of  their  very  minute  size,  these  micro-organisms  attracted 
attention  and  experimentation  chiefly  when  the  improvement  of 
the  microscope  allowed  objects  of  their  size  to  come  within  the 
limits  of  its  powers  of  observation.  At  first  simply  recognized 
as  existing,  their  persistence  and  universality  demanded  question 
as  to  what  they  are,  their  origin,  and  object. 

The  history  of  these  micro-organisms  is  related  to  that  of  spon- 
taneous generation,  to  that  of  the  fermentations,  to  the  pathogeny 
and  therapeutics  of  a  great  number  of  virulent  and  contagious 
affections  ;  and  in  a  more  general  manner  to  all  the  unknown, 
which  notwithstanding  the  efforts  of  modern  science,  still  sur- 
rounds the  origin  of  life  and  its  preservation. 

The  bacteria  are  the  lowest  of  organisms  belonging  to  the 
vegetable  kingdom. 

The  atmosphere  transports  myriads  of  microscopic  plants  and 
animals.  M.  Miquel  has  pursued  interesting  studies  upon  them. 
M.  Pouchet  has  devised  the  aeroscope,  that  bears  his  name,  for 
collecting  dust  from  the  air  which  contains  remnants  of  articles 
that  we  use,  existing  in  the  condition  of  impalpable  dust,  also 
pollen  of  plants,  particles  of  mineral  matter,  and  the  spores  of 
cryptogams,  the  moulds,  and  algae.  Some  micrographers  have 
suggested  that  germs  may  be  transported  by  the  vapor  of  water  ; 
but  Miquel's  experiments  show  that  the  evaporation  of  water 
from  the  ground  never  carries  any  schizomycetes  with  it.  On 
the  other  hand,  dry  dust,  especially  from  hospitals,  etc.,  etc.  is 
charged  with  micro-organisms.  The  greatest  labors,  however, 
have  been  employed  concerning  a  different  class  of  organisms 
than  the  algae  and  moulds.  The  plants  comprising  this  group, 
under  the  common  designation  of  bacteria,  in  consequence  of 
their  extreme  minuteness  and  refractive  power,  are  invisible  in 
the  preparations  of  the  aeroscopes,  and  are  recognized  only  by 
the  higher  powers  of  the  microscope. 

The  first  observer  who  recognized  the  micro-organisms  was 
Leeuwenhceck,  as  early  as  1675.  While  examining  with  his 
magnifying  glasses  a  drop  of  putrid  water,  the  father  of  micro- 
scopy remarked  with  profound  astonishment  that  it  contained  a 
multitude  of  little  globules,  which  moved  with  agility.  During 


236  APPENDIX. 


the  following  year  he  observed  the  presence  of  bacteria  in  faeces 
and  in  tartar  from  the  teeth. 

M.  Cohn  is  a  naturalist  who  has  occupied  himself  very  much 
with  the  bacteria.  In  1853  he  published  his  first  researches  upon 
this  subject,  and  twenty  years  later  there  appeared  a  series  of 
"  Memoirs  "  devoted  to  these  organisms.  In  the  first  paper  he 
gives  an  exposition  of  his  researches  upon  the  organization,  de- 
velopment and  classification  of  the  bacteria,  and  upon  their 
action  as  ferments.  His  classification  is  : 

1.  The  sphserobacteria,  or  globular  bacteria. 

2.  The  microbacteria,  or  rod  bacteria. 

3.  The  desmobacteria,  or  filamentous  bacteria. 

4.  The  spirobacteria,  or  spiral  bacteria. 

This  classification  has  probably  been  accepted  by  more  germ 
theorists  of  to-day  than  any  other  classification. 

The  smaller  spherical  bacteria  may  be  confounded  with  various 
objects,  e.  g.y  molecular  granules,  fat  globules,  amorphous  pre- 
cipitates, etc.  To  distinguish  these  pseudo-bacteria  Nageli  says  : 
"  There  are  but  three  distinctive  signs  which  enable  us  to  recog- 
nize with  some  certainty  that  the  granules  under  observation  are 
organisms  :  spontaneous  movement,  multiplication,  and  equality 
of  dimensions,  united  with  regularity  of  form."  To  which  may 
be  added  the  action  of  re-agents. 

The  atmosphere  is  laden  with  these  micro-organisms.  Devel- 
oping in  the  organic  infusions  into  which  they  fall,  they  soon 
determine  their  complete  decomposition  ;  for  during  their  growth 
bacteria  live  upon  the  nutritive  material,  as  all  other  plants  do 
upon  their  soil.  This  is  putrefaction,  and  they  are  always  pres- 
ent in  some  form  or  other  in  fermenting  liquids.  Fermentation 
only  occurs  after  the  access  of  particles  from  the  outer  world, 
and  it  is  asserted  by  the  supporters  of  the  germ  theory  that  these 
particles  are  organisms  or  their  spores,  and  that  it  is  by  the  growth 
of  these  organisms  in  the  fermentiscible  material  that  it  undergoes 
alteration.  The  essentials  for  the  production  of  new  forms  are  : 
a  putrescible  body,  water,  and  air  ;  while  heat,  light,  and  elec- 
tricity favor  the  process. 

As  Sir  William  Roberts  says  :  "  Without  saprophytes  there 
could  be  no  putrefaction  ;  and  without  putrefaction  the  waste 
materials  thrown  off  by  the  animal  and  vegetable  kigndoms 


APPENDIX.  237 


could  not  be  consumed.  Instead  of  being  broken  up,  as  they  are 
now,  and  restored  to  the  earth  and  air  in  a  fit  state  to  nourish 
new  generations  of  plants,  they  would  remain  as  an  intolerable 
incubus  on  the  organic  world.  Plants  would  languish  for  want 
of  nutriment,  and  animals  would  be  hampered  by  their  own 
excreta,  and  by  the  dead  bodies  of  their  mates  and  predecessors 
— in  short,  the  circle  of  life  would  be  wanting  an  essential  link. 
A  large  proportion  of  our  food  is  prepared  by  the  agency  of 
saprophytes.  We  are  indebted  to  certain  bacteria  for  our  butter, 
cheese,  and  vinegar.  Our  daily  bread  is  made  with  yeast,  and 
to  the  yeast  plant  (discovered  in  1836  by  Cagniard  de  la  Tour, 
and  also  independently  by  Schwann  about  the  same  time)  we 
also  owe  our  wine,  beer,  and  spirituous  liquors.  As  the  gen- 
erator of  alcohol,  this  tiny  cell  plays  a  larger  part  in  the  life  of 
civilized  man  than  any  other  tree  or  plant." 

Unfortunately  for  us,  however,  they  have  a  powerful  potency 
for  evil  also,  and  it  is  the  noble  aim  of  science  to  be  able,  by 
thorough  study  of  the  conditions  under  which  that  potency  is 
acquired  and  exerted,  to  keep  it  under  efficient  control. 

Much  still  remains  to  be  determined  with  regard  to  the  dis- 
ease-producing possibilities  of  the  germs  that  in  invisible  clouds 
drift  in  the  atmosphere.  The  more  delicate  and  exact  methods 
of  the  most  recent  observers — Koch,  Pasteur,  Tyndall,  Ehrlich, 
Ogsten,  Sternberg,  and  others — with  regard  to  their  nature  seem 
to  show  that  there  are  many  varieties  of  them,  each  of  which  has 
its  own  condition  of  growth,  requiring  or  developing  best  in  a 
particular  soil.  Different  species  multiplying  in  different  media 
and  varying  in  their  susceptibility  to  different  temperatures  and 
to  different  chemical  reagents.  Apparent  identity  of  form  does 
not  necessarily  indicate  identity  of  nature.  They  are  not  con- 
vertible into  each  other.  Each  species  produces  only  itself,  and 
is  produced  by  itself  alone,  and  when  introduced  into  a  sub- 
stance that  affords  a  favorable  soil  for  its  growth,  always  pro- 
duces the  same  results.  These  results  are  not  produced  suddenly, 
but  are  of  gradual  development,  progressing  with  the  slow  and 
steady  multiplication  of  the  organism.  They  may  be  cultivated 
artificially  in  either  solid  or  liquid  media. 

It  has  been  a  widely  disputed  question  as  to  whether  bacteria 
ever  occur  in  the  animal  in  a  perfectly  healthy  state  ;  the  affirma- 


238  APPENDIX. 


tive  view  having  been  taken  by  Billroth  and  some  others  ;  but  it 
is  denied  by  Koch,  by  Pasteur,  and  by  Ehrlich,  who  state  that 
they  have  never  detected  bacteria  in  the  healthy  animal.  The 
failure  of  putrefactive  bacteria,  according  to  experiments,  would 
go  to  show  inability  to  struggle  against  the  normal  cells  indige- 
nous to  the  soil  upon  which  they  are  planted.  Some  bacteria 
showed  power  of  existence  only  in  tissue  in  which  vitality  had 
entirely  ceased,  while  others  seemed  to  possess  the  power  of 
existence  in  the  presence  of  the  animal  cells  when  the  latter  suf- 
fered from  impairment  of  nutrition,  and  the  tide  of  life  was  turn- 
ing against  them.  Abnormal  composition  of  the  blood  seemed 
to  favor  the  development  of  some  bacteria,  after  they  had  found 
their  way  into  the  tissues.  e 

The  theory  of  a  causal  relation  between  bacteria  and  diseased 
processes  has  recently  received  a  wide  acceptation.  In  some 
diseases  this  relation  is  established,  while  in  others  it  is  presumed 
on  the  ground  that  bacteria  are  found  in  the  blood  and  diseased 
products.  As  additional  evidence  in  favor  of  special  bacteria 
for  different  diseases,  the  fact  is  advanced  that  bacteria  found  in 
different  diseases  have  been  discovered  to  have  different  mor- 
phological and  chemical  properties  ;  to  which  may  be  added 
of  still  greater  value,  the  different  appearances  presented  by  the 
colonies  growing  upon  solid  culture  media. 

Admitting  this  causal  relation  of  bacteria  to  disease,  it  must 
be  demonstrated  by  successive  cultures  of  the  bacteria  found  to 
exist  in  the  diseased  person,  and  by  the  induction  of  the  same 
disease  in  man  or  healthy  animals  by  inoculation,  with  a  repro- 
duction of  bacteria.  The  first  discovery  of  the  association  of  a 
germ  with  disease  was  by  Pollender,  in  1849,  wno  found  certain 
rodlets  in  the  blood  of  animals  suffering  with  splenic  fever,  also 
variously  known  as  anthrax,  charbon,  miltzbrand,  malignant 
pustule,  and  wool-sorter's  disease.  The  specific  character  of  the 
parasite  was  afterwards  pointed  out  by  Davaine  (1863),  and  sub- 
sequently carefully  investigated  and  confirmed  by  Pasteur  and 
Koch.  The  bacillus  can  be  isolated  and  developed  in  proper 
cultivating  media,  and,  when  inoculated  into  some  animals  will 
produce  splenic  fever. 

Again,  in  1873,  Obermeyer,  of  Berlin,  discovered  a  bacterium 
in  the  blood  of  patients  suffering  from  relapsing  fever,  which  has 


APPENDIX.  239 


been  named  Spirillum  Obermeyeri.  It  is  found  only  during  the 
febrile  paroxysm,  disappearing  during  the  interval.  So  far, 
attempts  at  cultivation  have  proved  unsuccessful. 

In  March,  1882,  Koch,  of  Berlin,  announced  the  discovery  of 
the  Bacillus  tuberculosis,  which  he  asserted  to  be  the  exciting 
cause  of  tuberculosis.  His  results  have  been  confirmed  by  many 
observers,  and  the  bacilli  have  been  found  in  the  tubercles  and 
sputa  of  persons  suffering  from  phthisis.  As  you  all  know,  they 
reproduce  themselves  when  cultivated  under  proper  conditions, 
and  cause  tuberculosis  when  inoculated  into  animals. 

The  discovery  of  the  parasitic  origin  of  glanders  followed 
closely  upon  that  of  the  bacillus  of  tuberculosis.  This  was  also 
made  in  Koch's  laboratory  by  Prof.  Schultz  and  Dr.  Loeffler ; 
and  the  results  were  verified  by  pure  cultures  and  inoculation. 

Birch-Hirschfeld  has  confirmed  the  discovery  of  the  presence 
of  a  micro-organism  of  syphilis,  already  announced  by  Aufrecht, 
which  consists  of  oval-shaped  micrococci  in  chains. 

In  gonorrhoea  a  micrococcus  was  discovered  by  Neisser,  isolated, 
cultivated,  and,  it  is  reported,  successfully  inoculated. 

Bacteria  have  also  been  found  in  malaria  and  in  whooping- 
cough.  A  micrococcus  has  also  been  found  associated  with 
croupous  pneumonia,  by  Friedlander.  This  may  occur  singly, 
but  it  is  generally  found  as  a  diplococcus. 

Von  Recklinghausen  first  described  the  bacteria  of  typhoid 
fever  ;  and  Klebs,  in  1881,  described  a  large  bacillus,  which  he 
calls  B. .  typhosus,  in  which  spores  are  found  in  the  centre,  and 
often  at  the  end.  This  is  carried  by  the  blood  and  lymphatics, 
and  is  found  in  all  the  organs.  It  is  more  generally  believed, 
however,  that  the  causa-  morbi  is  a  peculiar  short  bacillus  dis- 
covered by  Eberth.  This  is  rounded  at  both  ends,  and  has 
spores.  It  is  found  in  the  ulcers,  mesenteric  glands,  and  spleen, 
and  has  been  cultivated  by  Gaffky.  The  inoculation  of  animals 
has  not  been  successful  ;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  they 
do  not  have  the  disease  spontaneously. 

The  Micrococcus  vaccinia  is  very  small,  and  is  found  isolated  or 
in  pairs,  and  when  cultivated  forms  chaplets.  Cohn  regards  M. 
vaccinia  and  M.  variola  as  different  races  of  the  same  species, 
but  Magnin  thinks  them  identical.  In  small-pox,  Chauveau 
(1868)  first  proved  a  particular  non-diffusible  active  principle  ; 


240  APPENDIX. 


and  Cohn  (1872)  first  proved  that  the  lymph  contains  numerous 
micrococci. 

The  comma  bacillus  of  cholera  (Koch,  1883)  has  of  late 
attracted  much  attention.  They  are  found  chiefly  in  the  excreta 
of  cholera  patients,  are  slightly  curved  like  a  comma  or  half  of 
the  letter  U,  and  occur  single  or  in  pairs  like  the  letter  S  ;  when 
their  growth  is  retarded  they  form  a  spiral  chain  of  several  mem- 
bers. They  are  easily  cultivated  on  nutrient  gelatine,  forming  a 
growth  easily  distinguished  from  others,  even  from  those  which 
are  morphologically  similar.  After  much  experimentation  Koch 
has  succeeded  in  inoculating  animals. 

In  scarlet-fever,  Coze  and  Feltz  have  found  micrococci  in  the 
blood,  and  inoculation  of  rahbits  sometimes  produced  death. 

In  measles,  Coze  and  Feltz  found  bacteria  in  the  blood  which 
were  minute  and  mobile.  The  rabbits  were  not  killed.  Braid- 
wood  and  Vacher  caused  children  with  measles  to  breathe 
through  glass  tubes  coated  with  glycerine,  and  found  sparkling 
bodies,  something  like  those  in  vaccinia,  but  larger.  These  were 
most  abundant  during  the  second  and  third  days.  They  also 
found  them  in  the  lungs  and  livers  of  two  children  who  had  died 
of  the  disease. 

The  individuals  of  the  streptococci  of  erysipelas  are  smaller 
than  the  micrococci  of  cow-pock.  Lukoinsky  found  them  in 
masses  in  the  lymphatics,  on  the  border  of  the  erysipelatous  zone. 
Fehleisen  also  found  and  cultivated  them.  He  inoculated  the 
ears  of  nine  rabbits,  and  produced  the  characteristic  rash  in  from 
thirty-six  to  forty-eight  hours  ;  the  animals  did  not  die.  He  also 
produced  typical  erysipelas,  in  from  fifteen  to  sixty  hours,  in  men 
who  were  inoculated  to  produce  beneficial  results  in  tumors.  I 
have  also  cultivated  them  in  liquid  media. 

Septicasmia  and  pyaemia  have  been  carefully  investigated  by 
Koch  ;  and  these  diseases  have  been  found  due  to  bacteria,  which 
he  has  cultivated  and  inoculated. 

In  diphtheria,  micrococci  are  found  in  the  membrane  and  in 
the  surrounding  lymphatics,  blood,  kidneys,  and  muscles.  They 
are  about  the  size  of  M.  vaccinia,  slightly  oval,  single  or  in  pairs, 
and  in  colonies.  Eberth  showed  the  particulate  character  by 
filtration.  Klebs  claims  to  have  produced  diphtheria  from  in- 
oculation of  pure  cultures,  and  to  have  found  micrococci  in  the 


APPENDIX.  241 


tissues  and  blood.  Nasiloff  inoculated  the  cornea  with  enormous 
multiplication  of  micro-organisms  in  the  lymphatics  of  the  palate, 
bones  and  cartilages,  and  says  that  they  are  the  primary  step. 

The  question  as  to  the  origin  of  life  has  been  much  disputed, 
and  the  exponents  of  spontaneous  generation  and  of  the  germ 
theory  still  continue  the  contest. 

Extremists  in  the  doctrine  of  evolution  cannot  sustain  the 
hypothesis  that  the  whole  system  of  animal  life  is  but  a  growth 
of  one  or  more  original  species,  changing  into  or  evolving  others 
through  methods  of  development.  The  long  ages  of  the  past 
show  the  universality  of  the  law  of  life,  that  like  produces  like. 

Neither  the  agnostic  nor  the  materialist  can  account  for  the 
origin  of  matter,  much  less  can  they  account  for  the  origin  of 
mind.  Naturalists  tell  us  that  while  the  animal  and  vegetable 
kingdoms  are  reducible  to  primordial  cells  ;  that  while  there  is  a 
time  when  the  embryos  of  species  cannot  be  distinguished  from 
each  other  by  any  essential  features,  yet  the  variety  of  structural 
forms,  and  the  diversity  of  physiological  functions  which  cells 
develop,  are  always  according  to  the  special  type  and  construc- 
tion of  their  parent  cells  ;  evidencing  a  unity  of  plan  in  their 
construction  and  development. 

1.  The  germ  theory  asserts  that  no  life  has  been  evolved  (ex- 
cept in  the  remotest  periods  of  the  earth's  history)  other  than 
from  a  living  parent  or  a  living  germ. 

2.  The  spontaneous-generation  theory  asserts  that  now,  as  of 
old,  life  does  also  spring  de  novo  from  molecular  rearrangements 
of  the  atoms  of  dead  organic  matter. 

No  authority,  except  that  of  experimental  work,  can  weigh  a 
feather' in  a  balance  ;  no  a-priori  reasoning  can  give  the  victory 
to  either  creed.  The  one  condition  is,  to  take  dead  matter, 
isolate  it  from  all  contact  with  life,  place  it  under  favorable 
conditions  for  development,  and  watch  the  result. 

The  first  views  founded  on  experiment  and  observation,  apart 
from  mere  philosophical  speculation,  are  those  of  Needham  and 
Buff  on,  published  in  1748.  Needham's  theory  was  that  vitality 
is  produced  by  a  force  setting  particles  in  motion,  which  he  calls 
force  vtgttatrice.  Needham  was  opposed  by  Spallanzani,  in  1777, 
who  repeated  his  experiments  by  methods  so  precise  as  to  over- 
throw the  convictions  based  on  Needham's  labors.  Schultz  made 
16 


242  APPENDIX. 


an  important  advance  by  boiling  his  infusions  and  using  pure  air, 
and  was  followed  by  Schwann,  Schroeder,  and  Von  Dusch.  In 
1859,  Pouchet,  one  of  the  most  ardent  supporters  of  spontaneous 
generation,  published  his  work.  He  does  not  look  on  these 
organisms  as  originating  from  dead  matter,  though  he  believes 
that  it  is  the  contact  of  different  bodies  which  gives  rise  to  the 
development  of  proto-organisms.  Yet  their  origin  is  not  due  to 
affinity  alone  ;  vital  force  must  also  come  into  play,  which  owes 
its  power  to  certain  unknown  concomitant  circumstances.  The 
essentials  for  the  production  of  the  new  forms  are,  a  putrescible 
body,  water,  and  air,  while  heat,  light,  and  electricity  favor  the 
process.  His  experiments  were  performed  very  loosely,  and  are 
subject  to  many  errors. 

Appearing  shortly  after  Pouchet's  work,  and  leading  to  dia- 
metrically opposite  conclusions,  were  the  researches  of  M.  Pas- 
teur, who  begins  by  attempting  to  demonstrate  the  existence  of 
spores  in  the  atmosphere.  The  greatest  blow  was  given  to  the 
views  of  the  heterogenists  when  Pasteur  demonstrated  that 
albuminoid  materials  are  not  necessary  for  the  development  of 
bacteria  and  fungi,  but  that  they  can  be  replaced  by  crystalline 
salts,  such  as  phosphates  and  the  salts  of  ammonia. 

The  experiments  of  Prof.  Jeffreys  Wyman  have  been  largely 
quoted  by  the  supporters  of  heterogenesis  as  proving  their  view, 
though  Wyman  himself  expressed  no  such  opinion,  having 
approached  the  subject  with  a  perfectly  unbiased  mind.  To 
Prof.  Wyman  is  ascribed  great  credit  by  Cheyne,  whose  results 
agree  with  his  own. 

Dr.  Bastian  (1872)  gives  up  the  theory  that  organic  molecules 
are  derived  from  previously  living  molecules,  and  attempts  to 
demonstrate  that  vital  force  and  living  matter  may  arise  de  novo 
under  the  action  of  the  ordinary  physical  forces — heat,  light,  and 
electricity.  This  change  of  front  on  the  part  of  the  heterogenists 
is  clearly  brought  about  by  the  overwhelming  evidence  produced 
against  Pouchet's  views,  and  more  especially  by  Pasteur's  success 
in  cultivating  organisms  from  dust  in  fluids  containing  no  organic 
matter. 

The  limitation  of  cases  of  spontaneous  generation  which  has 
been  gradually  taking  place  is  very  instructive.  Beginning  with 
the  higher  animals,  it  became  more  limited,  frogs,  flies,  etc.,  being 


APPENDIX.  243 


by  degrees  excluded,  till  now  it  is  only  in  the  case  of  the  lowest 
forms  of  life  that  the  doctrine  is  asserted,  and  even  then  only  in 
certain  cases. 

Not  long  since  the  people  of  Boston  were  invited  to  listen  to  a 
series  of  lectures  which  continues  the  discussion  of  the  much 
disputed  question  of  the  origin  of  life.  The  lecturer,  although 
announcing  himself  as  a  decided  opponent  of  the  germ  theory, 
could  not  agree  with  the  spontaneo-generationists,  and  offered 
views  somewhat  peculiar  to  himself.  His  objective  point  was  the 
so-called  "ambient  organic  matter"  of  which  he  could  give  no 
definition  ;  but  in  a  long  series  of  illustrations  of  what  he  meant, 
he  showed  it  to  be  synonymous  with  the  bioplasm  of  Dr.  Lionel 
Beale.  The  term  bioplasm,  as  Dr.  Beale  says,  involves  no  theory 
as  regards  the  nature  or  origin  of  the  matter.  It  simply  dis- 
tinguishes it  as  living,  e.  g.,  a  living  white  blood  corpuscle  is  a 
mass  of  bioplasm,  or  it  might  have  been  termed  a  bioplast ;  a  very 
minute  living  particle  is  a  bioplast,  and  we  may  speak  of  living 
matter  as  bioplasmic  substance.  It  is  bioplasm,  or  ambient 
organic  matter,  according  to  the  new  view,  that  is  at  the  bottom 
of  all  the  functions  of  life,  it  having,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  low 
degree  of  inherent  vitality  ;  and  the  results  of  the  various  experi- 
ments that  have  been  performed  are  due  to  the  ambient  organic 
matter,  which  has  never  yet  been  separated,  it  was  urged,  from 
the  germs. 

It  was  argued  that  the  germ  theorists  can  prove  nothing  till 
they  can  isolate  an  organism  on  a  needle-point  and  use  it  for 
inoculation,  after  thoroughly  washing  and  drying.  Floating  dust 
of  the  air,  he  added,  is  not  germs,  but  ambient  organic  matter. 
He  also  expressed  a  desire  to  introduce  some  ambient  organic 
living  matter  into  the  infusions  and  see  what  it  would  do. 


PROOF  OF  THE   RELATION   OF   MICROBES  TO   DISEASE 
CONSIDERED. 

In.  Dr.  Nelson's  paper,  read  before  the  American  Academy 
of  Medicine,  it  is  assumed  that  the  relation  of  microbes  to 
disease  must  be  demonstrated  by  successive  cultures.  This 
view  was  supported  by  Dr.  Vaughan  at  a  meeting  of  the 


244  APPENDIX. 


American  Medical  Association,  held  at  Newport  last  year, 
who  formulated  it  thus :  "  That  before  we  admit  that  a  cer- 
tain micro-organism  is  the  cause  of  a  disease,  we  must  isolate 
from  cultures  of  this  organism  chemical  products  which  are 
capable,  by  inoculation  or  feeding,  of  producing  the  symp- 
toms of  the  disease." 

In  a  discussion,  Dr.  W.  H.  Welch,  of  Baltimore,  dissented 
from  that  view. 

He  thought  that,  while  it  is  an  important  addition  to  our  knowl- 
edge of  a  disease  to  become  acquainted  with  such  chemical  prod- 
ucts, yet  this  is  not  essential  to  a  belief  in  the  causative  agency  of  a 
specific  organism.  If  Dr.  Vaughan's  condition  be  accepted  as  an 
essential  link  in  the  chain  in  proof,  then  we  have  no  sufficient 
evidence  that  many  recognized  infectious  organisms,  such  as  the 
spirillum  of  relapsing  fever,  the  bacillus  of  leprosy,  or  even  the 
tubercle  bacillus  are  the  causes  of  their  respective  diseases. 
From  our  present  knowledge  we  are  justified  in  believing  that  a 
micro-organism  which  is  invariably  associated  with  a  disease, 
which  is  found  in  the  lesions  of  a  disease,  and  in  situations  which 
explain  the  symptoms  and  lesions,  and  which  is  never  found 
except  in  association  with  the  disease,  must  be  regarded  as  the 
cause  of  the  disease.  Where,  in  addition  to  this,  we  are  able 
by  experiments  on  animals  to  reproduce  the  disease  by  inocula- 
tion of  pure  culture,  this  additional  proof  is  most  welcome.  But 
in  many  infectious  diseases  we  cannot  furnish  this  last  method  of 
proof,  either  because  we  have  not  been  able  to  isolate  and  culti- 
vate the  suspected  organism,  as  is  the  case  with  relapsing  fever, 
or  because  animals  available  for  experiment  are  not  susceptible 
to  the  disease,  as  seems  to  be  true  of  typhoid  fever  and  cholera. 
For  this  reason  Koch  has  stated  that  it  is  not  absolutely  neces- 
sary that  we  reproduce  the  disease  experimentally  in  animals  by 
inoculation  before  we  admit  that  a  given  organism  found  associ- 
ated with  a  disease  under  the  conditions  stated  is  the  specific 
cause  of  the  disease.  The  evidence  Dr.Welch  believed  to  be  conclu- 
sive, that  the  typhoid  bacillus  is  the  specific  cause  of  typhoid  fever. 

Dr.  Vaughan  criticised  the  remarks  of  Dr.  Welch  as  an  affirma- 
tion that  the  first  of  Koch's  rules  is  all  that  is  necessary  in  order 
to  prove  that  a  given  germ  is  the  cause  of  a  disease  ;  in  other 
words,  because  Eberth's  germ  is  found  in  every  case  of  typhoid 


APPENDIX.  245 


fever  it  must  be  the  cause  of  that  disease.  He  did  not  think 
that  all  the  failures  to  induce  the  disease  by  inoculation  with  this 
germ  are  of  any  significance  as  to  its  cause.  "  When  Koch  first 
promulgated  his  four  rules,  and  pronounced  that  they  must  be 
complied  with  before  the  causal  relation  of  a  germ  to  a  disease 
should  be  considered  as  demonstrated,  the  scientific  accuracy  of 
such  a  demonstration  won  the  confidence  of  the  medical  world. 
Now  Professor  Welch  says  that  three  of  these  four  rules  are 
unnecessary.  He  claims  that  the  presence  of  the  Eberth  germ 
in  the  altered  tissue  of  typhoid  fever  is  a  proof  that  these  germs 
cause  typhoid  fever.  How  does  he  know  that  the  presence  of  the 
germ  is  the  cause  and  not  the  result  of  the  disease  ?  He  reaches 
this  conclusion  by  reasoning  from  analogy.  This  kind  of  reason- 
ing may  have  its  value,  but  it  is  not  scientific.  Suppose  that  an 
inhabitant  of  some  far-off  planet  should,  by  means  of  optical 
instruments,  be  able  to  discern  the  inhabitants  of  a  certain  por- 
tion of  the  globe.  Suppose  that  the  portion  of  the  globe  which 
should  fall  under  his  observation  to  be  the  frigid  zone.  Here 
he  would  find  the  inhabitants  living  in  houses  built  of  snow  and 
ice,  and,  reasoning  by  analogy,  he  might  conclude  that  all  the 
inhabitants  of  the  earth  live  in  houses  of  that  kind.  The  reason- 
ing of  Professor  Welch  is  just  as  unscientific  as  that  in  the  sup- 
posed case  of  the  planetary  observer.  Condensed,  his  reasoning 
would  be  about  as  follows  :  (i)  The  bacillus  of  consumption  is 
found  in  every  case  of  consumption,  and  the  Eberth  germ  is 
found  in  every  case  of  typhoid  fever.  (2)  The  bacillus  of  tuber- 
culosis has  been  demonstrated  to  be  the  cause  of  consumption. 
(3)  Therefore  the  Eberth  germ  is  the  cause  of  typhoid  fever." 

This  is  interesting  as  showing  differences  of  opinion  among 
careful  observers  and  physicians  of  recognized  authority  in 
their  profession,  but  the  rules  laid  down  by  Dr.  Vaughan  are 
those  most  generally  accepted.  They  are  more  precise  in 
affording  the  proof  which  reason  and  science  alike  demand. 


DISEASE   MICROBES   EVERYWHERE. 

In  a  recent  number  of  the  Medical  News  Dr.  William  H. 
Welch  gave  a  brief  but  interesting  summary  of  the  prevalent 
knowlege  of  microbes  in  the  medical  profession.  He  said : 


246  APPENDIX. 


No  department  of  medicine  has  been  cultivated  in  recent 
years  with  such  zeal  and  with  such  fruitful  results  as  that  relating 
to  the  causes  of  infectious  diseases.  The  most  important  of  these 
results  for  preventive  medicine,  and  for  the  welfare  of  mankind, 
is  the  knowledge  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  causes  of  sickness 
and  death  are  removable. 

While  nothing  should  be  said  or  need  be  said  to  lessen  the 
importance  of  cleanliness  for  public  health,  it  is  important  to  bear 
in  mind  that  hygienic  cleanliness  and  aesthetic  cleanliness  are  not 
identical.  In  water  which  meets  the  most  severe  chemical  tests 
of  purity,  typhoid  bacilli  have  been  found.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  air  in  the  Berlin  sewers,  which  certainly  do  not  meet  the 
most  modest  demands  for  aesthetic  cleanliness,  has  been  found  to 
be  nearly  or  quite  free  from  bacteria. 

It  has  always  been  recognized  that  some  infectious  diseases, 
such  as  the  exanthematous  fevers,  are  conveyed  directly  from  the 
sick  to  the  healthy.  It  is  not  disputed  that  in  these  evidently 
contagious  diseases  the  infectious  germ  is  discharged  from  the 
body  in  a  state  capable  at  once  of  giving  rise  to  infection. 

In  a  second  group  of  infectious  diseases,  of  which  malaria  is 
the  type,  the  infected  individual  neither  transmits  the  disease  to 
another  person,  nor,  so  far  as  we  know,  is  capable  of  infecting  a 
locality.  Here  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  infectious  germ 
is  not  thrown  off  in  a  living  state  from  the  body,  but  is  destroyed 
within  the  body.  In  this  group  the  origin  of  infection  under  nat- 
ural conditions  is  always  outside  of  the  body. 

In  a  third  group  there  is  still  dispute  whether  the  disease  can 
be  transmitted  directly  from  person  to  person,  but  all  are  agreed 
that  the  infected  individual  can  infect  a  locality.  It  is  especially 
fortunate  that  the  bacteria  which  cause  cholera  and  typhoid 
fever,  the  two  most  important  representatives  of  this  group  of 
so-called  miasmatic-contagious  diseases,  have  been  discovered  and 
isolated  in  pure  culture.  These  are  the  diseases  about  whose 
origin  and  epidemic  extension  there  has  been  the  greatest  contro- 
versy. They,  above  all  other  diseases,  have  given  the  impulse  to 
public  sanitation  during  the  last  half  century.  The  degree  of 
success  with  which  their  extension  in  a  community  is  prevented 
is  an  important  gauge  of  the  excellence  of  the  local  sanitary 
arrangements.  A  clear  comprehension  of  the  origin  and  spread 


APPENDIX.  247 


of  these  diseases  signifies  the  solution  of  many  of  the  most  vexed 
and  important  problems  of  epidemiology  and  of  State  hygiene. 

It  is  universally  admitted  that  many  infectious  agents  may 
be  transported  by  the  air,  but  the  extent  of  danger  from  this 
source  has  often  been  exaggerated.  It  is  a  popular  error  to  sup- 
pose that  most  of  the  minute  particles  of  dust  in  the  air  either  are 
or  contain  living  organisms.  The  methods  for  determining  the 
number  and  kind  of  bacteria  and  fungi  in  the  air  are  now  fairly 
satisfactory,  although  by  no  means  perfect.  These  have  shown 
that  while  the  number  of  living  bacteria  and  fungi  in  the  atmos- 
phere in  and  around  human  habitations  cannot  be  considered 
small,  still  it  is  greatly  inferior  to  that  in  the  ground  or  in  most 
waters.  Unlike  fungus  spores,  bacteria  do  not  seem  to  occur  to 
any  extent  in  the  air  as  single  detached  particles,  which  would 
then  necessarily  be  extremely  minute,  but  rather  in  clumps  or 
attached  to  particles  of  dust  of  relatively  large  size.  As  a  result, 
in  a  perfectly  quiet  atmosphere  these  comparatively  heavy  parti- 
cles which  contain  bacteria  rapidly  settle  to  the  ground  or  upon 
underlying  objects,  and  are  easily  filtered  out  by  passing  the  air 
through  porous  substances,  such  as  cotton-wool  or  sand.  Rain 
washes  down  a  large  number  of  bacteria  from  the  air. 

That  the  air  bacteria  are  derived  from  the  ground,  or  objects 
upon  it,  is  shown  by  their  total  absence,  as  a  rule,  from  sea  air  at 
a  distance  from  land,  this  distance  varying  with  the  direction  and 
strength  of  the  wind. 

A  fact  of  capital  importance  in  understanding  the  relations 
of  bacteria  to  the  air,  and  one  of  great  significance  for  preventive 
medicine,  is  the  impossibility  of  currents  of  air  detaching  bacte- 
ria from  moist  surfaces.  Substances  containing  pathogenic 
bacteria  as,  for  instance,  sputum  containing  tubercle  bacilli  or 
excreta  holding  typhoid  bacilli,  cannot,  therefore,  infect  the  air 
unless  these  substances  first  become  dry  and  converted  into  a 
fine  powder.  We  are  able  to  understand  why  the  expired  breath 
is  free  from  bacteria  and  cannot  convey  infection,  except  as  little 
particles  may  be  mechanically  detached  by  acts  of  coughing, 
sneezing,  or  hawking.  Those  bacteria,  the  vitality  of  which  is 
rapidly  destroyed  by  complete  desiccation,  such  as  those  of 
Asiatic  cholera,  evidently  are  not  likely  to  be  transported  as  in- 
fectious agents  by  the  air,  if  we  except  such  occasional  occur- 
rences as  their  conveyance  for  a  short  distance  in  spray. 


248  APPENDIX, 


The  only  pathogenic  bacteria  which  hitherto  have  been  found 
in  the  air  are  the  pus  organisms,  including  the  streptococcus 
found  by  Prudden  in  a  series  of  cases  of  diphtheria  and  tubercle 
bacilli ;  but  no  far-reaching  conclusions  can  be  drawn  from  the 
failure  to  find  other  infectious  organisms  when  we  consider  the 
imperfection  of  our  methods  and  the  small  number  of  observa- 
tions directed  to  this  point.  The  evidence  in  other  ways  is  con- 
clusive that  many  infectious  agents — and  here  the  malarial  germ 
should  be  prominently  mentioned — can  be  and  often  are  con- 
veyed by  the  air.  While  we  are  inclined  to  restrict  within  nar- 
rower limits  than  has  been  customary  the  danger  of  infection 
through  the  air,  we  must  recognize  that  this  still  remains  an  im- 
portant source  of  infection  for  many  diseases.  All  those,  how- 
ever, who  have  worked  practically  with  the  cultivation  of  micro- 
organisms have  come  to  regard  contact  with  infected  substances 
as  more  dangerous  than  exposure  to  the  air,  and  the  same  lesson 
may  be  learned  from  the  methods  which  modern  surgeons  have 
found  best  adapted  to  prevent  the  infection  of  wounds  with  the 
cosmopolitan  bacteria  which  cause  suppuration. 

We  are  not,  of  course  to  suppose  that  infectious  germs  float- 
ing in  the  form  of  dust  in  the  atmosphere  are  dangerous  only 
from  the  possibility  of  our  drawing  them  in  with  the  breath. 
Such  germs  may  be  deposited  on  substances  with  which  we  read- 
ily come  into  contact,  or  they  may  fall  on  articles  of  food  where 
they  may  find  conditions  suitable  for  their  reproduction,  which 
cannot  occur  when  they  are  suspended  in  the  air  in  consequence 
of  the  lack  of  moisture. 

Let  us  pass  from  the  consideration  of  the  air  as  a  carrier  of 
infection  to  another  important  source  of  infection — namely,  the 
ground.  The  ground,  unlike  the  air,  is  the  resting-  or  the  breed- 
ing-place of  a  vast  number  of  species  of  micro-organisms,  includ- 
ing some  which  are  pathogenic.  Instead  of  a  few  bacteria  or 
fungi  in  a  litre  as  with  the  air,  we  find  in  most  specimens  of  earth 
thousands,  and  often  hundreds  of  thousands,  of  micro-organisms 
in  a  cubic  centimetre.  Frankel  found  the  virgin  soil  almost  as 
rich  in  bacteria  and  fungi  as  that  around  human  habitations. 

We  have  but  meagre  information  as  to  the  kinds  of  bacteria 
present  in  the  ground  in  comparison  with  their  vast  number. 
Many  of  those  which  have  been  isolated  and  studied  in  pure  cul- 


APPENDIX.  249 


ture  possess  but  little  interest  for  us  so  far  as  we  know.  To  some 
of  the  micro-organisms  in  the  soil  appears  to  be  assigned  the  role 
of  reducing  or  of  oxidizing  highly  organized  substances  to  the 
simple  forms  required  for  the  nutrition  of  plants.  We  are  in  the 
habit  of  considering  so  much  of  the  injurious  bacteria  that  it  is 
pleasant  to  contemplate  this  beneficent  function  so  essential  to 
the  preservation  of  life  on  this  globe. 

Among  the  pathogenic  bacteria  which  have  their  natural  home 
in  the  soil,  the  most  widely  distributed  are  the  bacilli  of  malig- 
nant oedema  and  those  of  tetanus.  I  have  found  some  garden 
earth  in  Baltimore  extremely  rich  in  tetanus  bacilli,  so  that  the 
inoculation  of  animals  in  the  laboratory  with  small  bits  of  this 
earth  rarely  fails  to  produce  tetanus.  In  infected  localities  the 
anthrax  bacillus  and  in  two  instances  the  typhoid  bacillus,  so  far 
as  it  was  possible  to  identify  it,  have  been  discovered  in  the  earth. 
There  is  reason  to  believe  that  other  germs  infectious  to  human 
beings  may  have  their  abiding-place  in  the  ground  ;  certainly  no 
one  doubts  that  the  malarial  germ  lives  there. 

Of  great  interest  to  physicians  is  the  behavior  of  typhoid  and 
of  cholera  bacteria  in  the  ground.  As  has  already  been  intima- 
ted, the  ground  is  regarded  by  Pettenkofer  and  his  school  as  the 
principal  breeding-place  of  these  micro-organisms  outside  of  the 
body.  This  view,  however,  is  not  supported  by  bacteriological  in- 
vestigations. Inasmuch  as  the  cholera  and  the  typhoid  bacilli  may 
multiply  on  various  vegetable  substrata  and  substances  derived 
from  animals,  at  temperatures  often  present  in  the  ground,  it  is 
evident  that  here  and  there  conditions  may  be  present  for  their 
growth  in  the  ground,  but  this  growth  is  likely  to  be  soon  inter- 
rupted by  the  invasion  of  ordinary  saprophytic  organisms  and 
other  harmful  influences.  The  typhoid  bacilli  are  more  hardy  in 
resisting  these  invaders  than  are  the  cholera  bacteria,  which  easily 
succumb,  but  even  for  the  former,  so  far  as  our  present  knowledge 
extends,  the  ground  can  rarely  serve  as  a  favorable  breeding-place. 
4  It  is  not,  however,  necessary  that  these  organisms  should 
multiply  in  order  to  infect  for  a  considerable  time  the  ground ; 
it  is  sufficient  if  their  vitality  is  preserved.  A.S  to  this  latter  point, 
the  reports  of  different  investigators  are  not  altogether  concord- 
ant. Such  excellent  observers  as  Koch,  Kitasato,  and  Uffelman 
found  that  the  cholera  bacteria  when  added  to  faeces,  or  a  mixture 


250  APPENDIX. 


of  faeces  and  urine,  rapidly  diminished  in  number,  and  at  the  end 
of  three  or  four  days  at  the  most,  had  wholly  disappeared.  In  a 
mixture  of  the  intestinal  contents  from  a  cholera  corpse  with 
earth  and  water,  Koch  found  numerous  cholera  bacteria  at  the  end 
of  three  days,  but  none  at  the  end  of  five  days.  On  the  other 
hand,  Gruber  reports  the  detection  of  cholera  bacteria  in  cholera 
dejecta  fifteen  days  old.  The  weight  of  bacteriological  evidence, 
therefore,  is  opposed  to  the  supposition  that  the  bacteria  of  Asiatic 
cholera  preserve  their  vitality  for  any  considerable  time  in  the 
ground  or  in  the  excreta. 

With  respect  to  the  bacilli  which  cause  typhoid  fever,  it  has 
been  shown  by  Uffelman  that  these  may  live  in  faeces,  mixture 
of  faeces  and  urine,  and  mixture  of  garden  earth,  faeces,  and  urine 
for  at  least  four  and  five  months,  and  doubtless  longer,  although 
they  may  die  at  the  end  of  a  shorter  period.  He  also  finds  that, 
under  these  apparently  unfavorable  conditions,  some  multiplica- 
tion of  the  bacilli  may  occur,  although  not  to  any  considerable 
extent.  Grancher  and  Deschamps  found  that  typhoid  bacilli  may 
live  in  the  soil  for  at  least  five  months  and  a  half.  Unlike  the 
cholera  bacteria,  therefore,  the  typhoid  bacilli  may  exist  for 
months  in  the  ground,  and  in  faecal  matter  holding  their  own 
against  the  growth  of  multitudes  of  saprophytes.  This  difference 
in  the  behavior  of  cholera  and  typhoid  germs  is  in  harmony  with 
clinical  experience. 

Manifold  are  the  ways  in  which  we  may  be  brought  into  con- 
tact with  infectious  bacteria  in  the  ground,  either  directly  or  in- 
directly by  means  of  vegetables  to  which  particles  of  earth  are 
attached,  by  the  intervention  of  domestic  animals,  by  the  medium 
of  flies  or  other  insects,  and  in  a  variety  of  other  ways  more  or 
less  apparent. 

An  important,  doubtless  for  some  diseases  the  most  important, 
medium  of  transportation  of  bacteria  from  an  infected  soil  is  the 
water  which  we  drink  or  use  for  domestic  purposes.  It  is  not  the 
subsoil  water  which  is  dangerous,  for  infectious  like  other  bacte- 
ria cannot  generally  reach  this  in  a  living  state,  but  the  danger  is 
from  the  surface  water  and  from  that  which  trickles  through  the 
upper  layers  of  the  ground,  as  well  as  from  that  which  escapes 
from  defective  drains,  cesspools,  privy  vaults,  and  wrongly  con- 
structed sewers,  or  improper  disposal  of  sewage. 


APPENDIX.  251 


In  view  of  the  facts  presented,  there  is  no  sufficient  reason, 
from  a  bacteriological  point  of  view,  of  rejecting  the  transmissi- 
bility  of  typhoid  fever  and  cholera  by  the  medium  of  the  drink- 
ing water.  This  conclusion  seems  irrisistible  when  we  call  to 
mind  that  Koch  once  found  the  cholera  bacteria  in  large  num- 
bers in  the  water  of  a  tank  in  India,  and  that  the  typhoid  bacilli 
have  been  repeatedly  found  in  drinking-water  of  localities  where 
typhoid  fever  existed.  Nor  do  I  see  how  it  was  possible  to  inter- 
pret certain  epidemiological  facts  in  any  other  way  than  by  as- 
suming that  these  diseases  can  be  contracted  from  infected  drink- 
ing-water, although  I  know  that  there  are  still  high  authorities  who 
obstinately  refuse  to  accept  this  interpretation  of  the  facts. 

Pathogenic  bacteria  may  preserve  their  vitality  longer  in  ice 
than  in  unsterilized  drinking-water.  Thus  Prudden  found  ty- 
phoid bacilli  alive  in  ice  after  103  days. 

Among  the  various  agencies  by  which  infectious  organisms 
may  gain  access  to  the  food  may  be  mentioned  the  deposition  of 
dust  conveyed  by  the  air,  earth  adhering  to  vegetables,  water  used 
in  mixing  with  or  in  the  preparation  of  food,  in  cleansing  of  dishes, 
cloths,  etc.,  and  contact  in  manifold  other  ways  with  infected 
substances. 

Fortunately  a  very  large  part  of  our  food  is  sterilized  in  the 
process  of  cooking  shortly  before  it  is  partaken,  so  that  the  dan- 
ger of  infection  from  this  source  is  greatly  diminished  and  comes 
into  consideration  only  for  uncooked  or  partly  cooked  food  and 
for  food  which,  although  it  may  have  been  thoroughly  sterilized 
by  heat,  is  allowed  to  stand  considerable  time  before  it  is  used. 
Milk,  in  consequence  of  its  extensive  employment  in  an  unsteril- 
ized state  and  of  the  excellent  nutritive  conditions  which  it  pre- 
sents to  many  pathogenic  bacteria,  should  be  emphasized  as 
especially  liable  to  convey  certain  kinds  of  infection — a  fact  sup- 
ported not  less  by  bacteriological  than  by  clinical  observations. 
Hesse  found  that  also  a  large  number  of  ordinary  articles  of  food 
prepared  in  the  kitchen  in  the  usual  way  for  the  table  and  then 
sterilized  afford  a  good  medium  for  the  growth  and  preservation 
of  typhoid  and  cholera  bacteria,  frequently  without  appreciable 
change  in  the  appearance  of  the  food. 

Upon  solid  articles  of  food  bacteria  may  multiply  in  separate 
colonies,  so  that  it  may  readily  happen  that  only  one  or  two  of 


APPENDIX. 


those  who  partake  of  the  food  eat  the  infected  part,  whereas  with 
infected  liquids,  such  as  milk,  the  infection  is  more  likely  to  be 
transmitted  to  a  larger  number  of  those  who  are  exposed. 

In  another  important  particular  the  food  differs  from  the  other 
sources  of  infection  which  we  have  considered.  Not  only  the 
growth  of  infectious  bacteria,  but  also  that  of  bacteria  incapable 
of  multiplication  within  the  body,  may  give  rise  in  milk  and  other 
kinds  of  food  to  various  ptomaines,  products  of  fermentation,  and 
other  injurious  substances  which,  when  ingested,  are  likely  to 
cause  more  or  less  severe  intoxication  or  to  render  the  alimentary 
tract  more  susceptible  to  the  invasion  and  multiplication  of  in- 
fectious organisms. 

It  is  plain  that  the  liability  of  infection  from  food  will  vary, 
according  to  locality  and  season.  In  some  places  and  among 
some  races  the  proportion  of  uncooked  food  used  is  much  greater 
than  in  other  places  and  among  other  races.  In  general,  in  sum- 
mer and  in  autumn  the  quantity  of  fruit  and  food  ingested  in  the 
raw  state  is  greater  than  at  other  seasons,  and  during  the  summer 
and  autumn  there  is  also  greater  danger  from  the  transportation 
of  disease  germs  from  the  ground  in  the  form  of  dust,  and  the 
amount  of  liquids  imbibed  is  greater.  The  elements  of  predis- 
position, according  to  place  and  time,  upon  which  epidemiologists 
are  so  fond  of  laying  stress,  are  not,  therefore,  absent  from  the 
source  of  infection  now  under  consideration. 

I  have  thus  far  spoken  only  of  the  secondary  infection  of  food 
by  pathogenic  micro-organisms,  but,  as  is  well  known,  the  sub- 
stances used  for  food  may  be  primarily  infected. 

Chief  in  importance  in  this  latter  category  are  the  various  en- 
tozoa  and  other  parasites  which  infest  animals  slaughtered  for 
food.  The  dangers  to  mankind  resulting  from  the  diseases  of 
animals  form  a  separate  theme  which  would  require  more  time 
and  space  than  this  address  affords  for  their  proper  consideration. 
I  shall  content  myself  on  this  occasion  with  only  a  brief  reference 
to  the  infection  from  the  milk  and  flesh  of  tuberculous  cattle. 

It  has  been  abundantly  demonstrated  by  numerous  experiments 
that  the  milk  from  tuberculous  cows  is  capable,  when  ingested,  of 
causing  tuberculosis.  The  milk  may  be  infectious  not  only  in 
cases  in  which  the  udder  is  tuberculous,  but  also  when  the  tuber- 
culous process  is  localized  elsewhere.  How  serious  is  the  danger 


APPENDIX.  253 


may  be  seen  from  the  statistics  of  Bollinger,  who  found  with  cows 
affected  with  extensive  tuberculosis  the  milk  infectious  in  eighty 
per  cent,  of  the  cases,  in  cows  with  moderate  tuberculosis  the 
milk  infectious  in  sixty-six  per  cent,  of  the  cases,  and  in  cows  with 
slight  tuberculosis  the  milk  infectious  in  thirty-three  per  cent,  of 
the  cases.  Dilution  of  the  infected  milk  with  other  milk  or  with 
water  diminished,  or  in  sufficient  degree  it  removed,  the  dangers 
of  infection.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  many  of  the  so- 
called  scrofulous  affections  in  children  are  due  to  infection  from 
milk  derived  from  tuberculous  cows.  Probably  for  adults  the 
danger  of  acquiring  tuberculosis  from  the  use  of  infected  milk  is 
relatively  small.  Bollinger  estimates  that  at  least  five  per  cent,  of 
the  cows  are  tuberculous.  From  statistics  furnished  me  by  Mr. 
A.  W.  Clement.  V.  S.,  it  appears  that  the  number  of  tuberculous 
cows  in  Baltimore  which  are  slaughtered  is  not  less  than  three 
to  four  per  cent.  Among  some  breeds  of  cows  tuberculosis  is 
known  to  be  much  more  prevalent  than  this. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  the  meat  of  tuberculous  cattle  con- 
tains tubercle  bacilli  in  sufficient  number  to  convey  infection, 
unless  it  be  very  exceptionally.  Nevertheless,  one  will  not  will- 
ingly consume  meat  from  an  animal  known  to  be  tuberculous. 
This  instinctive  repugnance,  as  well  as  the  possibility  of  post- 
mortem infection  of  the  meat  in  dressing  the  animal,  seem  good 
grounds  for  discarding  such  meat.  The  question,  however,  as  to 
the  rejection  of  meat  of  tuberculous  animals  has  important  eco- 
nomic bearings,  and  has  not  been  satisfactorily  settled.  As  to 
the  propriety  of  the  rejection  of  the  milk  from  such  animals,  a 
matter,  however,  not  easily  controlled,  there  can  be  no  difference 
of  opinion. 

The  practical  measures  to  adopt  in  order  to  avoid  infection 
from  the  food  are  for  the  most  part  sufficiently  obvious.  Still,  it 
is  not  to  be  expected  that  every  possibility  of  infection  from  this 
source  will  be  avoided.  The  pleasure  of  living  would  be  de- 
stroyed if  one  had  his  mind  constantly  upon  escaping  possible 
dangers  of  infection.  It  is  difficult  to  discuss  the  matters  con- 
sidered in  this  address  without  seeming  to  pose  as  an  alarmist. 
But  it  is  the  superficial  and  half  knowledge  of  these  subjects 
which  is  most  likely  to  exaggerate  the  dangers  and  awaken  un- 
reasonable fears.  While  one  will  not,  under  ordinary  circum- 


254  APPENDIX. 


stances,  refrain  from  eating  raw  fruit  or  food  which  is  palatable, 
although  it  may  not  have  been  thoroughly  sterilized  by  heat,  or 
from  using  the  natural  water  unboiled,  in  the  fear  that  he  may 
swallow  typhoid  or  cholera  bacteria,  still  in  a  locality  infected 
with  typhoid  fever  or  cholera  he  will,  if  wise,  not  allow  him- 
self the  same  freedom  in  these  respects.  Cow's  milk,  unless  its 
source  can  be  carefully  controlled,  when  used  as  an  habitual  arti- 
cle of  diet,  as  with  infants,  should  be  boiled,  or  the  mixed  milk  of 
a  number  of  cows  should  be  selected  ;  but  this  latter  precaution 
offers  less  protection  than  the  former. 

In  most  places  in  this  country  we  are  sadly  lacking  in  good 
sanitary  inspection  of  the  food,  especially  of  the  animal  food 
offered  for  sale.  One  cannot  visit  the  admirable  slaughter 
house  in  Berlin  or  that  in  Munich,  and  doubtless  similar  ones 
are  to  be  found  elsewhere,  and  watch  the  intelligent  and 
skilled  inspection  of  the  slaughtered  animals  without  being  im- 
pressed with  our  deficiency  in  this  respect.  In  large  cities  an 
essential  condition  for  the  efficient  sanitary  inspection  of  animal 
food  is  that  there  should  be  only  a  few  places,  and  preferably 
only  one  place,  where  animals  are  permitted  to  be  slaughtered. 
Well-trained  veterinarians  should  be  selected  for  much  of  the 
work  of  inspection. 

DISINFECTION. 

The  following  valuable  paper  was  read  last  year  by  Dr.  H. 
Franklin  Parsons  before  the  British  Medical  Association  at 
Leeds.  It  is  deserving  very  careful  attention. 

By  disinfection  I  mean  the  destruction  of  infection — the  de- 
stroying of  the  activity  of  that  matter  which,  produced  by  a  sick 
person  and  received  into  the  system  of  a  healthy  one,  has  the  power 
of  causing  in  the  latter  a  disease  similar  to  that  from  which  the 
former  was  suffering.  In  popular  language  the  word  disinfection 
is  used  to  include  the  use  of  substances  ("  deodorants  ")  which 
destroy  offensive  odors,  and  "  antiseptics  "  which  prevent  or  retard 
putrefaction,  but  I  shall  employ  it  in  its  strict  etymological  sense. 

What,  then,  is  the  nature  of  this  infective  matter  which  in  the 
interests  of  the  public  health  we  seek  to  destroy  ?  It  is  known 
that  it  is  organic  matter,  and  particulate — that  is,  solid,  not  liquid 


APPENDIX.  255 


nor  gaseous — matter,  although  the  fine  colorless  particles  of  which 
it  is  composed  may  be  freely  suspended  in  both  water  and  air. 
There  is  reason  also  to  believe  that  it  is  in  all  cases  living  matter, 
and  consists  of  microscopic  vegetable  organisms.  The  analogy 
between  the  life  history  of  infectious  fevers  and  that  of  the  yeast 
plant  in  a  saccharine  solution  long  ago  suggested  to  Liebig  this  view 
— a  view  embodied  in  the  term  "  zymotic,"  often  applied  to  such 
diseases.  Modern  research  has  shown  that  certain  diseases  in  men 
and  animals  are  undoubtedly  caused  by  the  presence  in  the  system 
of  micro-organisms,  and  are  communicable  by  the  inoculation  of 
such  organisms.  Among  these  I  may  mention  two  acute  febrile 
diseases — namely,  anthrax  and  relapsing  fever  ;  acute  suppuration 
and  various  forms  of  septicaema  ;  the  chronic  diseases,  tuberculo- 
sis and  leprosy  ;  also  fowl  cholera  and  infectious  pneumo-enteritis 
of  the  pig, — "  swine  fever."  The  last-named  disease  has  an  inter- 
esting resemblance  to  the  common  human  infectious  disorders, 
in  that  the  contagium  may  be  transmitted  through  the  air,  and 
attaches  itself  to  places  in  which  the  affected  animals  are  kept. 
In  other  diseases,  as  Asiatic  cholera,  scarlatina,  diphtheria,  and 
enteric  fever,  certain  micro-organisms  have  been  found  and  have 
been  looked  upon  with  more  or  less  probability  as  the  cause  of 
the  disease  ;  but  the  connection  is  not,  perhaps,  as  yet  com- 
pletely established,  mainly  owing  to  the  difficulty  of  testing  it  by 
the  results  of  inoculations  on  animals.  In  other  infectious 
diseases,  again,  as  small-pox,  measles,  and  whooping-cough,  no 
such  organisms  have,  I  believe,  as  yet  been  identified,  but  we  may 
probably,  for  our  present  purpose,  without  much  risk  of  error, 
assume  the  materies  morbi  in  these  also  to  be  a  living  organism. 
This  assumption  furnishes  us  with  a  practical  means  of  test- 
ing the  efficacy  of  the  agents  we  employ  to  destroy  infection. 
It  is  in  most  cases  not  practicable  to  test  directly  the  effect  of 
our  disinfecting  agents  upon  the  contagia  of  the  ordinary  infec- 
tious diseases  of  mankind,  for  the  reason  that  we  cannot 
make  the  necessary  experiments  (including  control  experi- 
ments with  undisinfected  portions  of  material)  upon  human 
beings  ;  and  these  diseases  cannot,  or  cannot  with  certainty,  be 
produced  by  inoculation  in  the  lower  animals.  If,  however,  we 
choose  the  most  refractory  organism,  pathogenic  to  animals,  that 
we  can  find,  and  ascertain  how  it  may  be  killed,  we  shall  be  tol- 


APPENDIX. 


erably  safe  in  assuming  that  the  same  means  will  kill  the  contagia 
of  the  infectious  diseases  of  mankind,  with  which  as  sanitarians 
we  have  to  do.  Now  certain  of  the  pathogenic  micro-organisms, 
bacilli,  have  the  property  of  forming  spores,  and  these  spores 
are  found  to  be  more  resistant  than  the  fully  developed  organism, 
just  as  a  grain  of  wheat  will  survive  treatment,  such  as  drying 
and  dipping  in  poisonous  solutions,  which  would  kill  a  growing 
wheat  plant.  Of  the  pathogenic  microbes,  the  most  convenient 
for  the  purpose  of  testing  disinfecting  agents,  is  the  bacillus  an- 
thracis  ;  it  forms,  under  certain  circumstances,  spores  which  are 
exceedingly  tenacious  of  life  ;  it  can  be  cultivated,  and  is  easily 
recognized  both  by  its  microscopic  character  and  its  appearance 
when  growing  ;  and,  if  inoculated  into  animals,  it  produces  in 
them  with  certainty  the  disease  known  as  anthrax.  None  of  the 
ordinary  infectious  diseases  of  mankind  are  known  to  be  caused 
by  spore-bearing  microbes  (though  it  is  possible  that  small-pox, 
the  contagium  of  which  is  very  tenacious  of  life,  may  turn  out  to 
be  so)  ;  and  so  far  as  our  present  knowledge  and  experience  go, 
we  may  assume  that  means  which  will  destroy  the  spores  of  the 
bacillus  anthracis  may  be  relied  on  as  efficacious  for  our  purpose, 
though  it  does  not  follow  that  agents  which  do  not  destroy  the 
bacillus  anthracis  are,  therefore,  useless  against  the  less-resisting 
contagia  of  other  diseases. 

An  extensive  and  important  series  of  researches  upon  the  effi- 
cacy of  disinfectants,  conducted  by  Koch  and  his  coadjutors  for 
the  German  Imperial  Board  of  Health,  is  in  large  part  the  founda- 
tion of  our  modern  knowledge  on  the  subject,  though  his  results 
have  been  confirmed  and  extended  by  other  workers,  as  Dr. 
Klein  in  this  country,  and  a  committee  of  the  American  Medical 
Association  in  the  United  States.  Koch  employed  both  spore- 
bearing  and  non-spore-bearing  organisms  of  several  kinds. 
Threads  steeped  in  cultures  of  these  were  exposed  to  the  ac- 
tion of  disinfectants  and  tested  by  cultivation  or  by  inoculation 
on  animals.  The  general  result  of  the  experiments  with  chemical 
agents  was  to  show  the  comparative  or  entire  inertness  as  germi- 
cides of  many  of  the  substances  commonly  considered  disinfec- 
tants. Carbolic  acid  was  found  to  have  a  powerful  restraining 
effect  upon  the  growth  of  bacteria,  but  was  much  less  efficacious 
in  destroying  their  vitality.  To  kill  spore-bearing  forms  it  was 


APPENDIX.  257 


necessary  to  steep  them  for  one  or  two  days  in  a  five  per  cent, 
watery  solution  ;  a  two  per  cent,  solution  only  killed  them  at  the 
end  of  a  week  ;  while  a  one  per  cent,  solution  did  not  kill  them 
in  fifteen  days.  Solutions  of  carbolic  acid  in  alcohol  or  oil  had 
not  the  smallest  disinfecting  effect ;  five  per  cent  solutions  did 
not  kill  spore-bearing  bacilli  however  long  they  were  exposed  to 
their  action.  Vapor  of  carbolic  acid  at  ordinary  temperatures 
had  no  destructive  effect  on  spore-bearing  bacilli,  though  some 
effect  was  produced  at  elevated  temperatures.  In  other  cases 
also  it  was  found  that  the  disinfecting  effect  of  substances  in  the 
form  of  vapor  was  increased  by  elevation  of  temperature  ;  thus 
spores  of  bacilli  in  garden  earth  were  killed  in  two  hours  by  ex- 
posure at  a  temperature  of  176°  F.  to  the  vapor  of  bisulphide  of 
carbon,  although  neither  a  temperature  of  176°  in  dry  air  nor  the 
vapor  of  bisulphide  of  carbon  in  equal  concentration  at  ordinary 
temperatures  had  any  destructive  action  at  all  on  them. 

Sulphurous  acid  gas  was  found  efficacious  for  the  destruction 
of  non-spore-bearing  organisms.  Exposure  to  i  part  in  100  of 
air  killed  micrococci,  if  dry,  in  twenty  minutes  ;  if  moist,  in  one 
minute.  Spore-bearing  forms,  however,  were  not  killed,  even 
after  four  days'  exposure  to  a  6  per  cent,  gaseous  mixture  of  sul- 
phurous acid  in  air.  Chloride  of  zinc  had  no  disinfecting  effect ; 
spores  of  anthrax  bacillus,  which  had  remained  for  a  month  in  a 
5  per  cent,  solution,  were  in  no  way  affected.  Absolute  alcohol, 
glycerin,  chloroform,  sulphates  of  copper,  zinc,  alumina,  and  iron 
(5  per  cent,  watery  solutions),  and  boracic  acid  (5  per  cent.)  were 
not  found  to  have  any  destructive  effect  on  the  spores  of  bacillus 
anthracis.  These  spores  were,  however,  destroyed  by  exposure 
for  one  day  to  the  action  in  watery  solution  of  either  of  the  fol- 
lowing substances,  namely  :  chlorine,  bromine  (2  per  cent.), 
iodine,  corrosive  sublimate  (i  per  cent.),  permanganate  of  potas- 
sium (5  per  cent.),  and  osmic  acid  (i  per  cent.)  They  were  also 
destroyed  after  longer  periods  by  the  following  substances, 
namely  :  ether,  oil  of  turpentine,  hydrochloric  acid,  chloride  of 
iron  (5  per  cent.),  arsenious  acid  (i  per  cent.),  chloride  of  lime 
(5  per  cent.),  and  quinine  (i  per  cent.). 

Experimenting  with  heat  in  the  dry  form,  Koch  found  that 
bacteria,  free  from  spores,  could  not  withstand  an  exposure  of  an 
hour  and  a  half  to  a  temperature  of  a  little  over  212°  F.  in  hot  air, 
17 


258  APPENDIX. 


but  that  spores  of  bacilli  were  only  destroyed  by  remaining  three 
hours  in  hot  air  at  284°.  He  also  found  that  in  hot  air  the  tem- 
perature penetrated  so  slowly  that,  after  three  or  four  hours' 
heating  at  284°,  articles  such  as  small  bundles  of  clothes  and 
pillows  were  not  disinfected,  and  that  by  heat  of  this  degree 
and  duration  most  textile  materials  were  more  or  less  injured. 
The  results  with  steam  were  strikingly  superior.  It  was  found 
that  an  exposure  of  five  minutes  to  steam  at  212°  was  sufficient 
to  kill  the  spores  of  the  bacillus  anthracis,  and  that  the  penetra- 
tion of  heat  into  articles  exposed  to  steam  took  place  far  more 
rapidly  than  into  the  same  articles  exposed  to  hot  air. 

A  series  of  experiments  made  by  Dr.  Kline  and  myself  on  dis- 
infection by  heat,  confirm,  .on  the  whole,  the  results  of  Koch. 
The  materials  experimented  with  were  spore-bearing  cultures  of 
anthrax  bacillus,  anthrax  blood  free  from  spores,  bacilli  of  swine 
fever,  and  tuberculous  pus  ;  and  the  results  were  tested  by  inocu- 
lation on  animals.  Our  results  were  more  favorable  to  the  efficacy 
of  dry  heat  than  those  of  Koch.  We  found  that  spores  of  bacil- 
lus anthracis  were  killed  by  exposure  for  four  hours  to  a  temper- 
ature between  212°  and  216°  F.,  or  for  one  hour  to  245°.  Non- 
spore-bearing  bacilli  were  rendered  inert  by  one  hour's  exposure 
to  212°  to  218°.  Anthrax  spores  were  killed  by  boiling  for  one 
minute  in  water,  or  by  exposure  for  more  than  five  minutes  to 
steam  at  212°.  We  also  found  steam  heat  to  penetrate  far  more 
rapidly  than  dry  heat.  Similar  results  have  been  obtained  by 
other  observers,  so  that  the  superiority  of  steam  over  hot  air  as  a 
disinfectant  may  be  looked  upon  as  thoroughly  established. 
With  a  view  to  ascertain  whether  the  advantages  of  steam  could 
be  obtained  while  avoiding  certain  inconveniences  in  its  use,  we 
made  some  experiments  with  hot  moist  air,  but  the  result  was 
that,  while  the  moistening  of  the  air  aided  the  penetration  of 
heat,  it  did  not,  up  to  the  point  of  one  third  saturation,  render  it 
more  effectual  in  killing  bacilli  than  dry  air. 

Burning,  of  course,  is  a  very  thorough  means  of  disinfection. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  class  of  infectious  diseases  that  the 
morbid  poison  which  produces  any  such  disease  multiplies  in  the 
body  of  the  patient,  and  is  given  off  again  from  it,  and  that  it 
continues  thus  to  propagate  itself  for  a  considerable  period — often 
for  several  weeks.  The  poison  is  believed  to  be  especially  given 


APPENDIX.  259 


off  from  the  part  of  the  body  upon  which  its  local  effects  are 
manifested,  as  from  the  skin  in  small-pox  ;  from  the  skin  and 
throat,  and  perhaps  the  kidneys,  in  scarlet  fever  ;  in  discharges 
from  the  throat  and  nostrils  in  diphtheria  ;  and  from  the  bowels 
in  enteric  fever  and  cholera.  There  is  reason  to  think,  also,  that 
the  contagia — of  some  at  least  of  these  diseases — can  multiply  in 
suitable  media  outside  the  body,  as  in  milk,  sewage,  soiled  linen, 
or  moist  sewage-contaminated  soil  ;  perhaps,  also,  even  in  potable 
water.  On  the  other  hand,  some  of  the  pathogenic  organisms  are 
found  to  perish  as  putrefaction  advances,  either  through  the  for- 
mation by  them  of  chemical  compounds  antagonistic  to  their  own 
life,  or  through  the  competition  of  the  ordinary  putrefactive 
forms,  just  as  in  a  neglected  garden  the  exotic  flowers  are  choked 
or  stifled  by  the  ranker  growth  of  the  indigenous  weeds. 

Contagia  are  not  as  a  rule  permanently  destroyed  by  cold, 
though  that  of  yellow  fever  is  so.  They  also  in  general  are  able 
to  survive  drying,  though  Koch  states  that  drying  is  fatal  to  the 
comma  bacillus  which  he  finds  in  Asiatic  cholera. 

The  matters  which  may  act  as  carriers  of  infection,  and  may 
thus  require  disinfection,  are  :  i.  The  body  of  the  patient,  living 
or  dead.  2.  The  discharges  given  off  from  the  body  of  the 
patient,  and  more  particularly  those  from  the  organs  specially 
affected  by  the  disease — for  example  the  exfoliating  scarf  skin  in 
small-pox  and  scarlet  fever  ;  the  discharges  from  the  throat  and 
nostrils  in  scarlet  fever  and  diphtheria,  and  those  from  the  bowels 
in  enteric  fever  and  cholera.  3.  The  air  tainted  with  exhalations 
from  the  sick,  the  poison  probably  existing  therein  in  the  form  of 
suspended  particles.  4.  The  clothes,  bedding,  and  other  articles 
used  by  the  sick.  5.  Articles  of  food,  as  milk  and  water.  6. 
Walls,  floors,  etc.,  of  dwellings  occupied  by  the  sick,  especially 
dust  and  dirt  lodging  upon  the  walls,  and  dirt  accumulating  in 
the  cracks  of  the  floor.  7.  Collections  of  filth,  as  sewage,  espe- 
cially in  a  stagnant  state  or  deposited  in  or  encrusting  the  sides 
of  foul  drains  ;  foul  ground  surfaces,  and  subsoil. 

The  processes  of  disinfection  applicable  to  the  living  body, 
such  as  baths,  inunctions,  lotions,  and  dressings,  come  within  the 
province  of  curative  medicine  and  surgery  rather  than  that  of 
public  health. 

For  the  prevention  of  the  spread  of  infection  from  the  corpses 


260  APPENDIX. 


of  persons  who  have  died  of  infectious  diseases,  the  means  usually 
employed  are  enclosure  in  a  more  or  less  air-tight  coffin  with 
chloride  of  lime  or  charcoal,  and  early  burial,  and  I  do  not  think 
that  any  thing  more  is  necessary.  I  have  never  found  any  reason 
to  think  that  a  body  lying  undisturbed,  surrounded  by  plenty  of 
earth  of  a  suitable  nature,  is  a  danger  to  the  public  health.  The 
advocates  of  cremation  refer  to  the  observations  of  Pasteur  that 
cattle  grazing  in  a  field  in  which  the  bodies  of  others  that  have 
died  of  anthrax  have  been  buried  have  contracted  the  disease  ; 
and  that  the  spores  of  the  bacillus  anthracis  are  found  in  the 
superficial  mould  over  the  graves,  being  brought  to  the  surface 
by  earth-worms  ;  but,  as  I  have  mentioned,  the  spores  of  the 
anthrax  bacillus  are  exceptionally  tenacious  of  life. 

It  is  not  of  much  use  attempting  to  disinfect  the  infected  air 
of  sick-rooms  by  chemical  means,  for  active  chemicals,  if  present 
in  sufficient  quantity  to  be  effective  as  disinfectants,  would  ren- 
der the  air  irrespirable.  It  is  easier  to  get  rid  of  it,  and  let  its 
place  be  taken  by  fresh  air.  The  contagia  of  most  infectious 
diseases  appear  to  be  destroyed  when  freely  diluted  with  fresh 
air.  The  poison  of  typhus  fever  is  notably  so,  but  that  of  small- 
pox does  not  appear  to  be,  as  Mr.  Power  has  shown  that  small- 
pox may  be  disseminated  through  the  air  for  considerable 
distances  around  a  hospital  in  which  many  cases  of  that  disease 
are  under  treatment.  To  avoid  this  it  has  been  proposed  that 
instead  of  ventilating  small-pox  wards  into  the  open  air,  the  air 
from  them  should  be  extracted  through  a  flue  and  burnt  in  a  fur- 
nace ;  or  I  might  suggest  that  a  steam-blast  might  be  used  to  extract 
the  air  and  disinfect  it  at  the  same  time.  A  recent  invention  for 
ventilating  sewers  uses  a  circle  of  gas  burners  for  creating  an  up 
current  of  air,  and  passes  the  extracted  air  through  the  flames 
with  a  view  to  disinfect  it.  The  offensive,  and  possibly  infected, 
vapors  from  refuse-destructors  and  the  caldrons  used  in  bone- 
boiling  and  similar  trades  are  best  destroyed  by  passing  them 
through  a  furnace. 

For  the  disinfection  of  the  discharges  of  the  sick,  chemical 
agents  must,  as  a  rule,  be  used,  though  the  discharges  from  the 
throat  and  nostrils  in  diphtheria  and  scarlatina  are  best  received 
upon  pieces  of  rag  and  burnt.  It  is  of  prime  importance  that 
infectious  discharges  should  be  disinfected  immediately  on  being 


APPENDIX.  261 


passed  from  the  body,  both  because  delay  will  give  them  more 
opportunity  of  causing  mischief,  and  also  because  if  the  infected 
matter  be  mixed  with  a  large  quantity  of  other  organic  matters, 
as  in  a  drain  or  privy,  before  the  disinfectant  is  applied,  the 
action  of  the  latter  will  have  to  be  exerted  on  a  greater  mass  of 
material,  and  its  effect  will  be  pro  tanto  weakened  ;  and  the 
chances  will  also  be  great  that  portions  of  the  infective  material 
will  escape  its  action.  It  is  thought  by  some  that  germs  of  en- 
teric fever,  for  instance,  may  long  lurk  unsuspected  in  defective 
drains  and  privies  until  some  accidental  circumstance,  such  as 
disturbance  of  the  contents,  brings  them  into  activity,  and  that 
many  of  the  "  sporadic  "  cases  of  this  disease  thus  arise. 

Of  chemical  disinfectants  for  the  disinfection  of  excreta,  cor- 
rosive sublimate  is  probably  the  most  trustworthy  and  suitable 
for  ordinary  use.  In  its  use,  however,  three  precautions  have 
to  be  borne  in  mind.  i.  It  is  very  poisonous,  and  hence,  in  order 
to  avoid  accidents  (such  as  frequently  occur  with  carbolic  acid), 
the  solution  should  be  colored,  as  with  permanganate  of  potas- 
sium, sulphate  of  copper,  or  aniline  blue.  2.  It  corrodes  iron 
and  other  common  metals  and  is  instantly  decomposed  by  con- 
tact with  them,  hence  it  must  be  used  in  non-metallic  vessels. 
3.  It  forms  with  albumen  an  inert  insoluble  compound,  but 
this  may  be  prevented  by  acidulating  the  solution.  A  solution 
suitable  for  disinfection  of  excreta,  clothing,  etc.,  is  made  by 
dissolving  \  ounce  of  corrosive  sublimate  with  i  ounce  of 
hydrochloric  acid  and  5  grains  of  aniline  blue  in  3  gallons  of 
water. 

Chloride  of  lime  is  a  useful  disinfectant  for  excreta,  but  too 
strong  a  solution  injures  clothing.  Carbolic  acid  is  especially  an 
antiseptic,  retarding  putrefaction,  for  example,  in  sewage,  but  a 
5  per  cent,  solution  is  recommended  by  Koch  by  preference 
for  disinfecting  excreta  and  soiled  linen  of  cholera  patients. 
Creolin,  a  substance  allied  to  carbolic  acid,  is  said  by  recent 
experimenters  to  exceed  it  in  destructive  action  upon  spores  of 
bacilli,  at  the  same  time  that  it  is  not  poisonous  to  human 
beings.  Permanganate  of  potassium  is  an  excellent  deodorant, 
and  has  the  advantage  of  not  being  poisonous.  It  is  also,  to 
some  extent,  a  true  disinfectant,  but  its  action  upon  infective 
matter  is  much  weakened  when  this  is  mixed  with  a  quantity  of 


262  APPENDIX. 


other  organic  matter.  Green  copperas  (ferrous  sulphate)  is  a 
cheap  deodorant,  but,  according  to  Koch,  is  not  a  disinfectant 
proper.  Its  habitual  use  for  flushing  sewers  in  time  of  cholera 
was  strongly  recommended  by  Dr.  Budd,  and  was  said  at  Bristol 
to  have  produced  excellent  results. 

With  regard  to  the  disinfection  of  clothing,  bedding,  etc.,  used 
by  the  sick,  it  may,  in  the  first  place,  be  pointed  out,  that  for 
such  articles  as  will  stand  it  boiling  in  water  for,  say,  five  minutes 
is  an  effectual  means  of  disinfection.  And,  since  the  infectious 
matters  are  not  actually  incorporated  with  the  fibres  of  the  fabric, 
but  merely  attached  as  dirt  to  their  outside,  there  is  reason  to 
think  that  even  a  thorough  ordinary  washing  will  be  a  sufficient 
disinfection,  so  far  as  the  articles  themselves  are  concerned  ;  but 
the  infectious  properties  are  transferred  to  the  water  in  which 
they  have  been  washed.  The  dangerous  properties  of  such  water 
are  shown  by  the  frequency  with  which  cholera  is  contracted  by 
those  who  wash  the  linen  of  cholera  patients,  and  by  cases  like 
that  at  Mosely,  recorded  by  Dr.  Ballard,  where  an  outbreak  of 
enteric  fever  ocurred  among  the  persons  drinking  the  water  from 
a  well  into  which  had  percolated  the  soapsuds  in  which  the  soiled 
linen  of  an  enteric  fever  patient  had  been  washed.  To  avoid 
such  risks  it  is  necessary  that  infected  articles  which  are  washa- 
ble should  be  disinfected  before  being  washed.  This  should,  for 
obvious  reasons,  be  done  immediately  on  their  being  left  off. 
Boiling  might  be  used  for  this  purpose,  but  boiling  water  in 
sufficient  quantity  is  not  always  at  hand  ;  and  again,  if  soiled 
clothes  are  boiled,  the  coagulation  of  albuminous  matters  fixes 
stains  in  them  and  spoils  their  color.  Hence  it  is  more  con- 
venient to  put  the  clothes  to  steep  in  some  chemical  disinfecting 
solution,  of  which  a  panful  should  be  kept  in  readiness.  A  solu- 
tion of  corrosive  sublimate  is  the  best  for  this  purpose,  as, 
besides  being  the  most  effective,  it  has  the  advantage  that  it  does 
not  change  or  rot  the  linen.  When  the  grosser  dirt  has  been 
removed  by  rinsing  in  water,  the  articles  may  be  boiled. 

Articles  which  cannot  be  boiled  in  water  without  injury,  such 
as  cloth  clothes,  blankets,  and  beds,  are  best  disinfected  by 
exposure  to  heat,  and  the  experiments  which  I  have  quoted  show 
that  for  this  purpose  a  steam  heat  is  preferable  to  dry  heat  for 
several  reasons,  especially  because  a  lower  temperature  and  a 


APPENDIX.  263 


shorter  exposure  suffice  to  kill  infective  organisms,  and  because 
a  steam  heat  penetrates  much  more  rapidly  than  a  dry  heat  into 
bulky  and  badly  conductive  articles.  Further  advantages  are 
that  in  a  steam  apparatus  the  temperature  is  approximately 
equal  in  all  parts  ;  that  it  can  be  accurately  ascertained,  and 
kept  constant  at  any  required  degree  for  any  length  of  time — con- 
ditions which  are  essential  to  a  good  apparatus,  but  which  are 
very  difficult  to  obtain  where  dry  heat  is  employed.  Of  dry  heat 
apparatus  known  to  me,  Dr.  Ransom's  self-regulating  gas  disin- 
fecting stove  is  the  only  one  in  which  these  conditions  are  suc- 
cessfully complied  with.  In  several  kinds  of  disinfecting  ovens 
frequently  used  I  found  a  wide  difference,  sometimes  as  much  as 
100°  F.,  between  the  temperatures  in  different  parts  of  the  heated 
chamber  ;  and  the  thermometer  used  to  indicate  the  temperature 
did  not  do  so  by  a  wide  interval,  again,  sometimes  by  as  much 
as  100°.  Also  in  ovens  heated  by  coal  or  coke  it  is  difficult  to 
regulate  the  temperature  so  as  to  keep  it  near  the  required  point. 
The  result  of  such  defects  is  apt  to  be  either  clothes  are  scorched 
and  spoiled,  or  that,  on  the  other  hand,  with  a  view  to  avoid  this 
they  are  so  insufficiently  heated  as  not  to  be  thoroughly  disin- 
fected. 

With  care  and  in  a  suitable  apparatus  most  articles  can  be  sub- 
mitted to  either  dry  or  steam  heat  without  serious  injury,  but 
leather  is  instantly  destroyed  by  steam.  Books,  in  these  days  of 
free  libraries,  sometimes  need  to  be  disinfected  ;  it  may  be  done 
by  exposing  them  to  dry  heat,  the  covers  being  held  back  so  as  to 
open  out  the  leaves  and  allow  the  heat  to  penetrate.  Steam  is 
inadmissable,  as  it  would  soften  the  glue  and  destroy  the  leather. 
Letters  may  be  disinfected  by  heat,  but  the  effect  upon  sealing- 
wax  and  of  steam  in  loosening  the  gum  of  envelopes  must  be  re- 
membered. 

A  process  suitable  for  the  disinfection  of  rags  and  paper  and 
shoddy  mills  is  a  great  desideratum  ;  the  requisites  being  that  it 
shall  be  cheap,  rapid,  and  effectual,  and  applicable  to  rags  in  the 
bale  without  unpacking.  An  American  process  attempted  to  do 
this  by  forcing  steam  into  the  bale  through  hollow  screws  ;  but 
it  was  found  that  the  heat  was  not  uniformly  distributed.  The 
infection  from  which  rag-pickers  incur  the  most  danger  is  that  of 
small-pox,  the  contagium  of  which  is  the  most  persistent  of  any 


264  APPENDIX. 


of  the  common  infectious  diseases,  though  I  could  quote  cases 
which  show  that  the  contagia  of  scarlet  fever  and  diphtheria 
may  retain  their  activity  a  long  time  in  articles  that  are  kept  shut 
up  and  not  exposed  to  the  air.  Outbreaks  of  small-pox  occur 
from  time  to  time  among  workers  both  in  linen  and  cotton,  and 
in  woollen  rags,  but  are  most  frequent  at  paper  mills  where  the 
best  writing  paper  is  made,  the  reason  being  that  such  paper  is 
made  from  white  linen  rags,  the  remains  of  the  articles  that  have 
come  into  close  contact  with  human  bodies.  Unfortunately  there 
are  no  means  of  recognizing  infected  rags  except  by  their  effects, 
which  are  not  manifested  until  too  late  for  preventive  measures 
to  be  of  any  use.  It.  is  not  practical  to  insist  on  the  disinfection 
of  all  rags,  and  it  is  not  possible  to  say  which  rags  ought  to  be 
disinfected  and  which  it  is  not  necessary  to  disinfect.  Fortu- 
nately, against  small-pox — the  only  disease  from  which  rag- 
workers  incur  risk — they  have  in  re-vaccination  an  effectual 
protection. 

As  regards  disinfection  of  food,  no  one  would,  I  presume, 
willingly  eat  or  drink  articles  that  he  knew  to  be  infected.  As, 
however,  one  cannot  always  guarantee  the  absence  of  infection 
in  the  viands  we  eat  or  the  water  or  milk  that  we  drink,  it  is 
satisfactory  to  know  that  boiling  or  thorough  cooking  may  be 
trusted  to  secure  complete  disinfection.  In  the  experiments 
I  have  quoted  it  was  found  even  that  the  very  refractory 
spore-bearing  bacilli  of  anthrax  were  destroyed  by  one  minute's 
boiling  in  water  at  212°  F.,  though  certain  non-pathogenic  bacilli 
found  in  vegetables  and  milk  require  for  sterilization  a  higher 
temperature  or  more  prolonged  boiling,  a  fact  familiar  to  the 
housekeeper  who  makes  jam.  It  is  doubtless  owing  to  the  efficiency 
of  cooking  as  a  disinfectant  that  sanitarians  in  France  and  Ger- 
many, where  milk  is,  I  believe,  always  boiled  before  use,  are 
sceptical  as  to  the  possibility  of  propagation  of  infectious  disease 
by  that  medium  ;  whereas  with  us  in  England,  where  milk  is 
drunk  raw,  epidemics  of  milk  origin  are  a  matter  of  almost  every- 
day experience.  On  the  other  hand,  trichinosis,  so  common 
among  the  Germans,  who  eat  the  ham  raw,  that  it  has  to  be 
guarded  against  by  an  elaborate  system  of  microscopic  examina- 
tion of  all  slaughtered  swine,  is  practically  unknown  as  a  human 
disease  in  England  and  France,  where  meat  is  always  cooked. 


APPENDIX.  265 


The  case  of  the  Welbeck  outbreak  in  1880,  investigated  by  the 
president  of  our  section,  in  which  a  number  of  persons  were 
seized  with  acute  specific  diarrhoea  after  eating  cooked  ham  at 
an  auction,  may  at  first  sight  appear  to  disprove  the  efficacy  of 
cooking,  as  the  disease  was  proved  to  be  caused  by  a  spore-bear- 
ing bacillus  which  was  present  both  in  the  raw  ham  and  in  that 
which  had  been  cooked.  The  explanation,  however,  is  probably 
that  the  cooking  had  not  b~een  sufficient,  of  which  there  was  evi- 
dence ;  but  that  the  cooking  had  not  been  without  effect  was 
shown  by  the  fact  that  experiments  made  by  feeding  animals 
with  portions  of  raw  ham  were  more  uniformly  successful  than 
those  with  the  cooked  ham.  It  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that 
any  bacteria  left  undestroyed  would  in  time  reinfect  the  whole 
material,  and  also  that  a  chemical  poison  produced  by  the  bacteria 
would  not  necessarily  be  destroyed  by  a  degree  of  heat  sufficient 
to  kill  the  bacteria  themselves.  A  series  of  cases  of  "  pork-pie 
poisoning"  at  Retford,  investigated  by  Mr.  Spear  in  1887,  which 
presented  similar  features  to  the  Welbeck  outbreak,  was  found  to 
be  caused  by  a  bacillus  developing  in  the  pies  after  cooking. 
It  was  found  by  Dr.  Klein  that  exposure  for  one  moment  to  a 
temperature  of  153.5°  was  sufficient  to  kill  the  bacillus  ;  but  ex- 
posure for  twenty  minutes  to  a  temperature  falling  from  143.6° 
to  136.4°  did  not  do  so. 

For  house  disinfection,  fumigation  with  sulphurous  acid  or 
chlorine  gas,  the  latter  preferred,  followed  by  thorough  cleansing 
and  scrubbing,  removal  of  wall-paper,  and  lime-washing,  are  to 
be  recommended  ;  but  these  processes,  to  be  effectual,  need  to 
be  carried  out  with  more  thoroughness  than  is  frequently  done. 
A  difficulty  often  met  with  is  to  know  where  the  inmates  are  to  go 
while  the  house  is  being  disinfected  ;  and  it  would  be  useful  for 
this  and  other  purposes  if  sanitary  authorities  had  power  to  pro- 
vide refuges  for  people  whom,  although  not  themselves  sick,  it 
might  be  desirable  to  remove  from  their  homes. 


BENIGNANT   MICROBES. 

The  following  brief  reference  to  micro-organisms  that  seem 
to  effect  a  useful  purpose  in  the  economy  of  nature  appeared 
in  an  organ  of  the  druggists  and  pharmacists  : 


266  APPENDIX. 


Since  the  time  when  Pollender  discovered  certain  micro- 
organisms in  the  blood  of  animals  affected  with  anthrax,  scientists 
have  been  busy  in  biological  and  physiological  research,  with  a 
view  of  establishing  a  relation  between  each  disease  and  some 
specific  bacterium  present  during  that  disease. 

As  a  result  of  these  painstaking  researches  we  have  a  bacillus 
designated  as  the  producing  cause  of  cholera,  another  as  that  of 
typhoid,  while  the  bacillus  butyricus,  the  streptococcus  pyogenes, 
and  the  mycoderma  aceti  are  as  well  known  to  biologists,  and 
almost  as  readily  recognized  by  them,  as  are  the  more  familiar 
plants  by  the  well-versed  botanist. 

As  an  offset  to  this  vast  array  of  malign  micro-organisms, 
Weibel  has  announced  the  discovery  of  "  putrescence  vibrios," 
which  may  be  termed  benignant  bacteria.  These  micro-organ- 
isms, according  to  his  observations,  play  an  important  part  in 
destroying  the  more  offensive  products  of  putrefactive  change. 

In  this  connection  it  might  be  well  to  note  the  following  fact 
as  stated  some  time  since  by  Smart :  "  The  bacteria  of  putrefac- 
tion elaborate,  as  products  of  their  vital  action,  organic  substances 
which  are  destructive  to  the  organism  which  determined  their 
formation."  E.  and  H.  Salkowski  some  years  since  separated 
two  of  these  products,  phenyl-propionic  and  phenyl-acetic  acids, 
while  the  fact  that  carbolic  acid  is  a  product  of  putrefaction  has 
long  been  known.  Nor  is  the  power  of  these  substances  confined 
exclusively  to  the  micro-organism  of  which  they  are  the  product 
for  Klein  showed,  some  four  years  since,  that  they  were  fatal  to 
other  micro-organisms  as  well,  though  not  always  so  to  the  spores 
of  these  bodies. 

While  we  have  not  the  full  report  of  Weibel  at  hand,  it  seems 
probable  that  at  least  a  portion  of  the  beneficent  action  ascribed 
to  his  benignant  bacteria  is  due  to  this  elaboration  of  self- 
poisoning  material  on  the  part  of  the  bacteria  of  putrescence. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  DRUGS  ON  MICROBES  IN  THE  INTESTINE. 
Dr.  Stieff  reviews  the  experiments  and  writings  of  those  who 
have  shown  that  such  substances  as  phenol,  indol,  skatol,  and 
kreosol,  found  in  the  urine,  are  really  products,  in  the  healthy 
individual,  of  decomposition  going  on  in  the  intestine  under  the 


APPENDIX.  267 


action  of  the  micro-organisms  of  putrefaction.  In  individuals  in 
whom  there  is  some  putrefactive  process  taking  place  elsewhere 
in  the  body,  owing  to  some  pathological  condition,  these  sub- 
stances will  appear  in  the  urine  in  excess.  There  will  also  be  a 
similar  increase  when  the  absorption  from  the  intestine  of  the 
normal  products  of  digestion  is  insufficient  or  interrupted.  He 
next  discusses  the  experiments  which  have  been  made  to  deter- 
mine whether  the  introduction  of  antiseptic  materials  into  the 
intestine  would  not  interfere  with  the  decomposition  of  albumi- 
nous bodies  there.  As  he  does  not  regard  the  results  of  these 
experiments  as  conclusive,  and  as  it  is  important  to  possess  some 
substance  which  has  this  power  of  checking  putrefaction  in  the 
bowel,  he  himself  undertook  some  investigations  on  the  subject, 
performed  on  a  series  of  patients  in  Gerhardt's  clinic.  The  drugs 
employed  were  calomel  and  camphor,  and  careful  analyses  were 
made  of  the  urine  while  they  were  being  given.  The  experi- 
ments he  details  fully,  and  sums  up  the  results  in  the  following 
conclusions  :  i.  Calomel,  given  in  doses  of  five  grains  three 
times  a  day,  exhibited  no  disinfecting  power  in  conditions  of 
increased  decomposition  in  the  intestine.  2.  Consequently  it 
can  scarcely  be  recommended  for  the  purpose  of  checking  putre- 
faction in  the  intestine  on  account  of  the  large  dose  which  would 
need  to  be  employed.  3.  Camphor  appears  to  possess  a  slight 
restraining  power  on  putrefaction,  since,  in  two  cases,  doses  of 
five  grains  three  times  a  day  produced  a  diminution  of  the  intesti- 
nal decomposition.  4.  This  action  of  camphor  does  not  appear 
at  once,  and  is  only  distinct  after  two  or  three  days. — The 
American  Journal  of  the  Medical  Sciences,  December,  1889. 


DISEASE  OF  THE  NIPPLE  DUE  TO  MICROBES. 

In  1874  Paget  called  attention  to  a  chronic  affection,  apparently 
eczematous,  of  the  skin  of  the  mamma  and  aureola,  which  is 
almost  always  followed  by  cancer  of  the  breast.  The  numerous 
authors  who  have  since  published  such  cases  enumerate  as  char- 
acteristics of  the  eruption  which  distinguish  it  from  common 
eczema  :  its  limitation  by  a  well-defined  line,  the  parched  indu- 
ration of  the  skin,  the  absolute  incurability,  and  finally  and  espe- 
cially the  complication,  after  a  shorter  or  longer  period,  by  a 


268  APPENDIX. 


cancer.  Histological  examinations  by  Bultlin,  Fhin,  Duhring, 
and  others  did  not  explain  the  nature  of  the  affection,  which 
some  have  since  regarded  as  an  eczema  which  extended  to  the 
milk  channels,  and  others  as  an  unknown  disease  sui  generis. 
Darier  thinks  that  the  following  facts  will  render  it  possible  to 
understand  the  peculiarities  as  yet  unexplained  of  this  type  of 
disease. 

If  some  of  the  scales  are  taken  from  the  diseased  surface  and 
dissolved  in  water  or  in  a  solution  of  iodide,  whether  directly  or 
after  maceration  in  diluted  ammonia  or  bichromate  of  ammonia, 
small  round  bodies,  surrounded  by  a  refracting  membrane  with 
double  contour,  are  at  once  discovered  among  the  epithelium 
cells  and  often  in  their  interior.  These  bodies  have  a  diameter 
which  is  larger  than  that  of  the  cells  or  equally  large  ;  their  mem- 
branes contain  a  mass  of  protoplasm  or  of  more  or  less  numer- 
ous corpuscles.  These  bodies  are  always  found  in  sections  or 
fragments  of  the  excised  skin,  in  all  the  layers  of  the  epidermis, 
and  especially  in  the  glandular  prolongations  of  the  epidermis. 
The  character  of  these  bodies  admits  the  conclusion  that  we  have 
to  do  with  psorospermae  or  coccidix.  They  are  present  in  all 
stages  of  evolution  ;  a  mass  of  protoplasm,  at  first  naked,  sub- 
sequently surrounded  by  a  membrane,  divides  itself  later  on  into 
numerous  granules  enclosed  in  a  cyst. 

The  epithelioma  of  the  breast  contains  similar  parasites,  and 
also  a  large  number  of  elements  which  cannot  with  certainty  be 
distinguished  from  epithelial  cells,  but  which  are  often  enclosed 
in  other  cells.  Bultlin,  who  saw  this  in  1876,  thought  it  an  in- 
stance of  endogenesis.  The  parasites  are  probably  more  numer- 
ous than  they  appear  to  be.  That  they  play  a  part  in  the  forma- 
tion of  the  tumor  seems  probable,  since  there  is  in  each  lobe  a 
certain  number  of  coccidix  in  their  characteristic  form. 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  the  presence  of  these  organisms  in 
the  tissue  of  the  epithelium  produces  a  budding  and  extension 
of  it.  M.  Albarran  quite  recently  exhibited  epithelioma  con- 
taining coccidix,  and  further  demonstrations  of  this  kind  will  soon 
be  quite  numerous.  It  is  therefore,  logical  to  suppose  that  the 
parasites  which  produce  the  epidermic  lesion  in  Paget's  disease 
of  the  nipples,  cause  also  the  epithelial  growth  of  the  milk  chan- 
nels which  constitute  the  epithelioma. 


APPENDIX.  269 


The  above  facts  appear  important  from  different  standpoints. 
Paget's  disease  of  the  nipple  is  a  parasitical  affection  ;  its  diag- 
nosis becomes  easy  by  microscopical  examination  of  scales  such 
as  Darier  made  in  four  cases.  Then,  also,  this  disease  furnishes 
a  first  indication  of  the  nature  and  the  pathogeny  of  certain  epi- 
theliomas. — La  Semaine  Mtdicale,  1889. 


THE   DEVELOPMENT   OF    MICROBES  IN   MALARIAL   FEVER. 

There  are  various  forms  of  this  fever,  but  those  where  the 
symptoms  return  on  the  third  day  (tertian  ague)  and  the 
fourth  day  (quartan)  are  the  most  important.  Dr.  Golgi 
finds  that  both  are  the  result  of  microbes. 

"  In  the  tertian  form,"  he  says,  "  the  organism  enters  the  red 
blood-corpuscles,  and  then  goes  through  certain  stages  of  de- 
velopment, which,  in  regard  to  succession  one  upon  another, 
and  in  regard  to  symptoms,  appear  with  unchangeable  regularity. 
As  soon  as  the  infection  has  taken  place,  and  the  typical 
clinical  forms  of  tertian  fever  have  developed,  there  is  always 
positive  proof  forthcoming  of  a  characteristic  condition,  whether 
before  or  during  or  after  the  fever  attacks.  With  numerous 
preparations  and  drawings  Golgi  describes  the  various  phases 
of  development,  and  the  different  species  of  parasites  in  simple 
tertian  fever.  He  also  explains  the  observations  he  has  made 
in  clinical  cases  of  mixed  fevers.  Thus,  in  the  blood  of  a 
patient  with  treble  quartan  fever  there  were  three  distinct  gen- 
erations of  parasites,  which  came  to  maturity  always  one  after 
another,  day  by  day.  The  examination  of  the  blood  was 
confirmed  by  the  regular  succession  of  a  violent,  a  medium, 
and  a  very  slight  attack.  As  to  their  biological  properties, 
the  parasites  of  the  tertian  fever  are  thus  distinguished  from 
those  of  the  quartan  fever  :  i.  By  the  completion  of  their 
development-cycle  in  two  instead  of  three  days,  as  in  quartan 
fever.  2.  By  the  different  character  of  the  amoeboid  movements, 
which  are  more  active  in  tertian  fever.  3.  By  the  relation  of  the 
parasite  to  the  red  blood-corpuscle  that  harbors  it.  While  in 
quartan  fever  the  substance  of  the  attacked  blood-corpuscles 
maintains  its  characteristic  yellowish-green  color  until  the  last 


270  APPENDIX. 


phase  of  distinction,  the  action  of  the  parasite  of  the  tertian  fever, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  very  early  discerned,  the  blood-corpuscles 
losing  their  color,  even  when  the  parasites  occupy  as  yet  but  a 
small  portion  of  them.  This  rapid  decoloration  appears  to  be 
connected  with  the  rapidity  with  which  the  parasite  sends  out  its 
protoplasmic  shoots  into  all  parts  of  the  blood-corpuscle — even 
to  its  periphery.  In  respect  of  their  morphological  properties, 
too,  the  two  kinds  of  parasites  differ,  i.  The  protoplasm  of  the 
quartan-fever  parasite  has  a  much  finer  appearance.  This  is 
chiefly  observable  in  the  early  phases  of  development  of  each 
kind.  2.  In  quartan  fever  the  pigment  appears  in  form  of 
thicker  grains  and  bacilli,  which  in  tertian  fever  are  of  extreme 
delicacy.  3.  The  process  of  separation  differs  in  an  extraordinary 
degree  in  the  two  kinds  of  parasites.  According  to  Golgi's  views 
the  numerous  varieties  of  intermittent  malarial  fevers  are  simply 
varieties  or  combinations  of  the  two  chief  types — the  tertian  and 
quartan  fever."  

THE  MICROBE  OF  TUMORS. 

Dr.  Verneuil's  conclusions  as  to  the  presence  and  influence  of 
pathogenic  microbes  in  tumors  are  as  follows  :  Tissue  of  new 
formation  of  a  malignant  character,  such  as  cancer,  sarcoma, 
epithelioma,  may  at  a  given  moment  contain  different  microbes, 
of  which  neither  the  origin,  kind,  nor  quantity  can  be  accurately 
determined.  The  presence  of  these  microbes  may  for  a  long 
time  be  innocuous,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  in  some  cases  results 
in  the  rapid  increase  in  softening  and  ulceration  of  the  tumor. 
Microbes  are  not  found  in  lipoma,  fibroma,  nor  in  cancers  and 
sarcomas  characterized  by  an  initial  slow  development,  but  are 
almost  always  detected  in  softened  and  ulcerated  tissue.  These 
microbes,  besides  exercising  a  morbid  influence  on  the  surround- 
ing tissues,  affect  also  the  general  economy,  and  constitute  a 
febrile  element.  During  excision  of  the  morbid  growth,  they  are 
communicated  to  other  parts  of  the  wound,  and  are  capable  of 
provoking  septicasmia,  which  may  prove  fatal. — The  British  Med- 
ical Journal.  

THE  CAUSE  OF   BALDNESS  ALSO  A  MICROBE. 
Dr.  Saymonne,  says  the  London  Medical  Record  of  September 
28th,  claims  to  have  isolated  a  bacillus,  called  by  him  "  bacillus 


APPENDIX.  271 


crinivorax,"  which  is  the  cause  of  alopecia.  It  is,  he  says,  found 
only  on  the  scalp  of  man,  other  hirsute  parts  of  the  body  and  also 
the  fur  of  animals  being  free  from  it.  The  bacilli  invade  the  hair 
follicles  and  make  the  hair  very  brittle,  so  that  they  break  off  to 
the  skin.  Then  the  roots  themselves  are  attacked.  If  the  mi- 
crobes can  be  destroyed  early  in  the  disease,  the  vitality  of  the 
hairs  may  be  preserved,  but  after  the  follicles  are  invaded  and  all 
their  structures  injured,  the  baldness  is  incurable.  The  follow- 
ing is  Dr.  Saymonne's  remedy  to  prevent  baldness  :  Ten  parts 
crude  cod-liver  oil,  ten  parts  of  the  expressed  juice  of  onions, 
and  five  parts  of  mucilage  or  the  yolk  of  an  egg  are  thoroughly 
shaken  together  and  the  mixture  applied  to  the  scalp,  and  well 
rubbed  in,  once  a  week.  This,  he  asserts,  will  certainly  bring 
back  the  hair  if  the  roots  are  not  already  destroyed  ;  but  the  ap- 
plication of  the  remedy  must  be  very  distressing  to  the  patient's 
friends  and  neighbors,  and  in  my  practice  it  would  not  be 
necessary,  since  all  microbes  would  assuredly  be  destroyed  by  the 
Microbe  Killer,  which  is  neither  injurious  nor  unpleasant.  W.R. 


A  MICROBE  THE  CAUSE  OF  CONSUMPTION. 

Last  year  the  French  Academy  of  Medicine  appointed  a 
commission  to  investigate  tuberculosis  in  man  and  other 
animals,  and  to  report  on  the  danger  of  using  tuberculous 
milk  and  meat  as  food,  and  also  the  dangers,  if  any,  of  the 
spread  of  the  disease  by  infection. 

The  commission  was  a  most  able  one,  being  composed  of  the 
following :  Drs.  Chauveau,  Butel,  Cornil,  Grancher,  Landouzy, 
Lannelongue,  Legroux,  Leblanc,  Nocard,  Rosignol,  Ver- 
neuil,  Villemin,  and  Petit.  The  report  was  received  and  ap- 
proved by  Drs.  Bouchard,  Brouardel,  Potain,  and  Proust,  all 
members  of  the  Congress  on  Tuberculosis.  Their  report  is 
as  follows : 

I.  Of  all  diseases  tuberculosis  claims,  both  in  city  and  country, 
the  largest  number  of  victims.  In  1884,  a  year  chosen  at  hazard, 
for  example,  there  were  56,970  deaths  in  Paris,  and  of  these  about 
15,500 — over  a  quarter — died  of  tuberculosis.  Pulmonary 
phthisis  is  not  the  only  manifestation  of  tuberculosis,  as  is  gener- 


2/2  APPENDIX. 

ally  thought  by  the  public.  Physicians  have  discovered  that 
many  diseases  may  be  due  to  tuberculosis,  among  others,  bron- 
chitis, colds,  pleurisy,  scrofula,  meningitis,  peritonitis,  enteritis, 
tumors,  osseous  and  articular  lesions,  cold  abscesses,  etc.  All 
these  may  be  directly  caused  by  tuberculosis,  and  their  ultimate 
prognosis  is  no  more  hopeful  than  that  of  phthisis  pulmonalis. 

II.  Tuberculosis  is  a  parasitic,  virulent,  contagious,  and  trans- 
missible disease,  caused  by  a  microbe — the  bacillus  of  Koch.     This 
microbe  can  penetrate  into   the  organism   either  through  the 
digestive  tract  by  means  of  food  or  through  the  lungs  by  means 
of  the  inspired  air,  or  through  the  skin  and  mucous  membrane  by 
means  of  abrasions,  punctures,  wounds,  or  ulcerations.     Certain 
diseases,   such  as  measles,   small-pox,   chronic  bronchitis,  and 
pneumonia,  and  certain  constitutional  conditions,  due  to  diabetes, 
alcoholism,  syphilis,  etc.,  greatly  predispose  the  contraction  of 
tuberculosis.     The  causes  of  tuberculosis  being  known,  the  pre- 
cautions taken  to  prevent  the  entrance  of  the  germs  into  the  body 
are  capable  of  preventing  its  propagation.     We  have  an  encour- 
aging example  in  the  results  obtained  in  typhoid  fever,  in  which 
the  epidemics  diminish  in  all  towns  where  the  necessary  measures 
are  taken  to  prevent  the  typhoid  germ  from  mingling  with  the 
drinking-water. 

III.  The  parasite  of  tuberculosis  may  be  found  in  the  milk, 
muscles,  and  blood  of  animals  which  serve  as  food  for  man  (ox, 
cow  especially,  rabbit,  poultry).      Raw  meat  or  underdone  meat 
and  blood  being  capable  of  containing  the  living  germ  of  tuber- 
culosis, should  be  prohibited.     Milk,  for  the  same  reason,  should 
only  be  consumed  after  having  been  boiled. 

IV.  Owing  to  the  danger  arising  from  milk,  the  protection  of 
young  children,  who  are  peculiarly  predisposed  to  the  contraction 
of  tuberculosis  (over  two  thousand  children  under  the  age  of  two 
years  dying  annually  of  tuberculosis  in  Paris  alone)  should  spe- 
cially demand  attention  of  both  mothers  and  nurses.     The  ideal 
food  for  the  infant  is  the  milk  of  a  healthy  woman.     The  tuber- 
culous mother  must  not  nurse  her  child,  but  should  confide  it  to 
the  care  of  a  healthy  nurse,  living  in  the  country,  where,  under  the 
best  hygienic  conditions,  the  risks  of  contagion  from  tuberculosis 
are  much  less  than  in  town.    The  child  thus  brought  up  will  have 
the  best  chance  of  escaping  tuberculosis. 


APPENDIX.  273 


If  nursing  at  the  breast  is  impossible,  the  infant  may  be  fed 
artificially  upon  cow's  milk  by  means  of  the  bottle  or  spoon  ;  the 
milk  must,  however,  always  be  boiled.  Unboiled  milk  of  asses 
and  goats  is  infinitely  less  dangerous. 

V.  Owing  to  the  dangers  arising  from  the  meat  of  slaughtered 
animals,  which  may  preserve  all  the  appearances  of  health  even 
when  tuberculous,  the  public  has  every  interest  in  being  assured 
that  the  inspection  of  meats,  as  required  by  the  law,  is  being 
properly  and  generally  practised.     The  only  certain  method  of 
avoiding  the  danger  of  meat  coming  from  tuberculous  animals,  is 
to  cook  it  to  such  an  extent  that  the  interior  portions  are  as  well 
done  as  the  surface.     Only  thoroughly  roasted,  boiled,  or  fried 
meat  is  entirely  devoid  of  danger. 

VI.  On  the  other  hand,  the  germ  of  tuberculosis  may  be  trans- 
mitted from  the  human  tuberculous  subject  to  the  healthy  human 
subject,  by  means  of  the  sputa,  pus,  dried  mucous  discharges,  and 
all  objects  laden  with  tuberculous  dust ;  it  is  necessary,  therefore, 
in  order  to  insure  security  from  the  transmission  of  tuberculosis, 
to  : 

1.  Be  known,  that  the  sputa  of  phthisical  subjects  is  the  most 
formidable  agent  of  transmission  of  tuberculosis  ;  there  is  danger 
to  the  public  in  discharging  the  sputa  upon  the  earth,  carpets, 
hangings,  curtains,  napkins,  handkerchiefs,  clothes,  and  coverings. 

2.  Be  it  well  understood,  that  the  use  of  spittoons  should  be 
imposed  everywhere  and  by  every  one.     These  spittoons  should 
be  daily  emptied  into  the  fire,  and  well  washed   with  boiling 
water.     They  should  never  be  emptied  upon  dust-heaps  or  in 
the  garden,  where  they  might  lead  to  the  infection  of  poultry,  or  in 
latrines. 

3.  Never  sleep  in  the  bed  of  a  tuberculous  subject ;  to  occupy 
his  room  as  little  as  possible  ;  but,  above  all,  do  not  allow  young 
children  to  sleep  there. 

4.  Remove  from  places  or  dwellings  inhabited  by  tuberculous 
subjects  all  persons  who  may  be  considered  as  predisposed  to  the 
disease  ;  the  children  born  of  tuberculous  parents,  those  having 
had  measles,  small-pox,  pneumonia,  repeated  attacks  of  bron- 
chitis, or  suffering  from  diabetes,  etc. 

5.  Not  to  use  articles  which  possibly  may  have  been  contami- 
nated by  phthisical  patients  (linen,  bedding,  clothing,  articles  of 

18 


2/4  APPENDIX. 


toilet,  hangings,  furniture,  toys)  except  after  thorough  disinfec- 
tion (high-pressure  steam,  boiling,  sulphur  vapors,  or  lime- 
washing). 

6.  Insure  that  the  rooms  of  hotels,  furnished  apartments,  cot- 
tages, or  villas  occupied  by  phthisical  patients  in  watering  places 
or  winter  resorts,  are  furnished  and  carpeted  in  such  a  manner  as 
to  render  them  capable  of  undergoing  easy  and  thorough  disinfec- 
tion after  the  departure  of  each  patient.  It  would  be  better  if 
such  rooms  had  neither  curtains,  carpets,  nor  hangings,  but  were 
washed  with  lime  and  the  floor  covered  with  linoleum.  It  is  of 
the  highest  importance  to  the  public  that  they  should  prefer  the 
hotels  in  which  such  indispensable  hygienic  precautions  and 
measures  for  disinfection  are  thoroughly  carried  out. 

Dr.  Dujardin-Beaumetz,  in  the  discussion  which  followed 
the  reading  of  the  above  report,  said  that  on  the  whole  he 
approved  of  the  report  of  the  commission,  but  he  must 
remind  them  that  it  was  a  mistake  to  think  that  tuberculosis 
was  more  frequent  in  towns  than  in  the  country.  Exactly 
the  reverse  is  true.  Further,  some  of  the  statements  made 
by  the  commission  were  purely  hypothetical  and  unsubstan- 
tiated by  facts.  Contagion  by  means  of  milk  is  absolutely 
exceptional.  For  this  to  take  place,  it  would  not  only  be 
necessary  for  the  cow  to  be  tuberculous,  but  also  for  her  to 
be  afflicted  with  tuberculous  mammae.  Again,  the  transmis- 
sion of  tuberculosis  by  tuberculous  meat  had  not  been  proven. 
However,  we  know  that  the  microbe  dies  in  a  weakly  acid 
solution  ;  hence  the  ingestion  of  tuberculous  meat  cannot  be 
dangerous,  since  the  contents  of  the  stomach  are  acid. 

M.  Ducemberg  thought  milk  from  a  tuberculous  cow  most 
dangerous. 

Dr.  Germain  Se"e  remarked  that  the  commission  stated  the 
possibility  of  the  microbe  entering  the  system  through  the 
air.  This  assumption  he  regarded  as  false.  In  the  light  set 
forth  by  the  commission,  tuberculosis  would,  indeed,  be 
nothing  else  than  a  pest.  Koch  had  demonstrated  that  the 
tubercle  bacillus  cannot  live  in  the  air.  It  can  only  live  and 
reproduce  itself  in  the  organism.  Regarding  the  use  of  spit- 


APPENDIX.  275 


toons,  he  agreed  with  the  commission.  As  long  as  the  sputa 
is  kept  moist  there  is  no  danger,  but  when  dry  it  is  different. 
Regarding  the  infectivity  of  tuberculous  milk,  he  agreed  with 
Dujardin-Beaumetz.  To  carry  out  the  views  of  the  commis- 
sion as  to  the  use  of  raw  meat,  he  thought  impossible. 
Were  all  meat  cooked  according  to  the  requirements  of  the 
commission,  little  of  it  worth  eating  would  be  left.  A  tem- 
perature of  320  °  F.  is  necessary  for  the  destruction  of  the 
bacilli.  Meat  is  not  eatable  after  having  been  subjected  to 
a  temperature  much  over  195  °  F.  Moreover,  it  has  been 
conclusively  proved  that  the  consumption  of  tuberculous 
meat  is  devoid  of  danger. 

The  further  discussion  of  the  report  was,  as  we  learn  from 
the  Medical  News,  adjourned  to  the  next,  meeting  of  the 
Academy. 

TO  PREVENT  THE  SPREAD  OF  CONSUMPTION. 

The  following  regulations  were  agreed  upon  a  short  time 
ago  by  the  New  York  Board  of  Health,  and  a  large  number 
of  copies  was  printed  for  general  distribution,  though  but 
little  heed  was  given  to  them.  They  are  practical  evidence, 
nevertheless,  of  the  acknowledged  soundness  of  my  views  : 

Pulmonary  tuberculosis  (consumption)  is  directly  communi- 
cated from  one  person  to  another.  The  germ  of  the  disease 
exists  in  the  expectoration  of  persons  afflicted  with  it.  The 
following  extract  from  the  report  of  the  pathologists  of  the 
Health  Department  explains  the  means  by  which  the  disease 
may  be  transmitted  : 

"  Tuberculosis  is  commonly  produced  in  the  lungs  (which  are 
the  organs  most  frequently  affected)  by  breathing  air  in  which 
living  germs  are  suspended  as  dust.  The  material  which  is 
coughed  up,  sometimes  in  large  quantities,  by  persons  suffering 
from  consumption  contains  these  germs,  often  in  enormous 
numbers.  .  .  .  This  material,  when  expectorated,  frequently 
lodges  in  places  where  it  dries,  as  on  the  street,  floors,  carpets, 
handkerchiefs,  etc.  After  drying,  in  one  way  or  another  it  is 
very  apt  to  become  pulverized  and  float  in  the  air  as  dust." 


276  APPENDIX. 


By  observing  the  following  rules,  the  danger  of  catching  the 
disease  will  be  reduced  to  a  minimum  : 

i.  Do  not  permit  persons  suspected  to  have  consumption  to 
spit  on  the  floor  or  on  cloths,  unless  the  latter  be  immediately 
burned.  The  spittle  of  persons  suspected  to  have  consumption 
should  be  caught  in  earthen  or  glass  dishes  containing  the  follow- 
ing solution  :  Corrosive  sublimate,  i  part  ;  water,  1000  parts. 

Do  not  sleep  in  a  room  occupied  by  a  person  suspected  of 
having  consumption.  The  living-rooms  of  a  consumptive  patient 
should  have  as  little  furniture  as  practicable.  Hangings  should 
be  especially  avoided.  The  use  of  carpets,  rugs,  etc.,  ought 
always  to  be  avoided. 

3.  Do  not  fail  to  wash  thoroughly  the  eating  utensils  of  a 
person  suspected  of  having  consumption,  as  soon  after  eating  as 
possible,  using  boiling  water  for  the  purpose. 

4.  Do  not  mingle  the  unwashed   clothing  of    consumptive 
patients  with  similar  clothing  of  other  persons. 

5.  Do  not  fail  to  catch  the  bowel  discharges  of  consumptive 
patients  with  diarrhoea  in  a  vessel  containing  corrosive  sublimate 
i  part,  water  1000  parts. 

6.  Do  not  fail  to  consult  the  family  physician  regarding  the 
social  relations  of  persons  suffering  from  suspected  consumption. 

7.  Do  not  permit  mothers  suspected  of  having  consumption  to 
nurse  their  offspring. 

8.  Household  pets  (animals  or  birds)  are  quite  susceptible  to 
tuberculosis  ;  therefore  do  not  expose  them  to  persons  afflicted 
with  consumption  ;  also,  do  not  keep,  but  destroy  at  once,  all 
household  pets  suspected  of  having  consumption,  otherwise  they 
may  give  it  to  human  beings. 

9.  Do  not  fail  to  cleanse  thoroughly  the  floors,  walls,  and  ceil- 
ings of  the  living-  and  sleeping-rooms  of  persons  suffering  from 
consumption  at  least  once  in  two  weeks. 


A  PAPER  ON  THE  TREATMENT  OF  CONSUMPTION. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  New  York  State  Medical  Society  held 

at  Albany  this  year   an    interesting   paper  was  read  on  the 

treatment    of  tuberculosis   by   Dr.   Paul   H.   Kretzschmar, 

Supervisor-at-Large  of  Kings  County.     It  will  be  found  on 


APPENDIX.  277 


perusal  to  be  an  endorsement  of  much  that  has  been  said  in 
the  earlier  pages  of  this  book. 

At  the  Congress  of  American  physicians  and  surgeons  held  in 
Washington  during  September,  1888,  writes  Dr.  Kretzschmar, 
one  of  the  most  prominent  members  of  the  profession  from  the 
city  of  New  York  made  the  statement  that  the  time  had  come 
when  pulmonary  consumption  should  be  classified  among  the 
contagious  and  infectious  diseases,  and  consumptives  should  be 
cared  for  in  like  manner  as  small-pox  patients  are.  At  that  time 
the  writer  entered  his  protest  against  any  such  proposition,  but 
so  much  has  been  said  since  regarding  the  probability  of  trans- 
mitting the  disease  from  the  patient  to  the  healthy  that  a 
discussion  of  this  very  important  subject  seems  to  be  advan- 
tageous. The  fact  that  the  International  Congress  for  Tuber- 
culosis, which  will  meet  in  Paris  this  year,  has,  among  other  sub- 
jects, the  question  of  "  Isolation,"  on  its  programme,  is  evidence 
that  a  portion  of  the  medical  profession  does  seriously  consider 
the  advisability  of  such  a  proposition.  Since  Dr.  Koch  first 
demonstrated  the  specific  cause  of  tuberculosis,  it  has  been 
asserted  that  consumptives  are  a  source  of  danger  to 
their  surroundings,  and  it  has  been  claimed  that  many 
cases  of  pulmonary  tuberculosis  are  directly  traceable  to 
infection  by  contact  only.  As  long  as  one  hundred  years 
ago  the  theory,  now  preached  by  many  that  consumptives  are 
liable  to  infect  healthy  persons  by  contact  only,  was  accepted 
as  a  fact  and  appropriate  laws  were  issued.  In  Naples  a  law 
existed  during  the  latter  part  of  last  century,  for  over  fifty  years, 
compelling  the  attending  physician  to  report  every  case  of 
pulmonary  consumption  (Tulcera  pulmonale),  and  the  fine  for  the 
first  failure  to  comply  with  this  law  was  300  ducats,  to  be  followed, 
in  case  of  repeated  neglect  to  report  this  class  of  cases,  by  ex- 
pulsion from  the  country  for  a  period  of  ten  years.  All  poor 
consumptives  were  at  once  removed  to  a  hospital ;  the  clothes 
and  bedding  belonging  to  consumptive  patients  had  to  be  de- 
stroyed after  death  ;  the  dwellings  of  all  patients  who  were 
fortunate  enough  to  die  outside  of  the  hospital  had  to  be  entirely 
renovated,  and  nobody  was  allowed  to  occupy  them  until  one 
year  afterward.  Similar  laws  and  restrictions  were  in  force  in 
Portugal,  without,  however,  influencing  the  prevalence  of  pul- 


2/8  APPENDIX. 


monary  consumption  in  any  marked  degree.  Rigorous  laws, 
strictly  enforced  for  fifty-six  years,  would  certainly  have  shown 
some  favorable  results,  if  isolation  and  public  supervision  of  con- 
sumptives were  of  any  practical  value  whatsoever.  In  a  paper 
read  before  the  American  Public  Health  Association  at  its  meet- 
ing in  October  last  the  writer  used  the  following  language  :  "  If 
the  advocator  of  isolation  would  reflect  for  a  moment  and  con- 
sider the  hardship  and  injury  which  would  follow  its  introduc- 
tion, affecting,  as  it  would,  a  large  portion  of  the  human  race  and 
seriously  interfering  with  our  entire  social  life,  without  giving  the 
slightest  assurance  of  better  results  than  those  obtained  after 
many  years  of  trial  in  Naples  and  Portugal,  one  would  think  that 
they  would  hesitate  to  advocate  so  inhuman  a  proposition.  It 
will  not  be  denied  by  them  that  a  very  large  proportion  of  con- 
sumptives are  phthisical  subjects  long  before  they  themselves  are 
aware  of  it,  and  even  physicians  frequently  treat  alveolar  catarrh 
as  bronchitis  until  the  microscope  demonstrates  the  fact  that  the 
patient's  expectorations  are  full  of  tubercular  bacilli.  What 
benefit  would  be  derived  by  isolating  advanced  cases  of  pulmonary 
consumption,  if  cases  during  the  early  stages  are  permitted  to  de- 
posit millions  of  microbes  with  their  expectorations  upon  our 
streets,  in  our  churches,  public  halls,  railroads,  and  all  over  their 
own  residences  ?  And  finally,  what  advantage  would  it  be  to 
have  isolation  enforced  in  the  State  of  New  York  and  not  in 
New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  and  other  neighboring  States,  or  if 
adopted  in  the  United  States  and  not  in  Canada?"  Careful 
consideration  of  the  subject  has  strengthened  the  writer's  former 
opinion  about  the  infeasibility,  cruelty,  and  absurdity  of  any 
attempt  to  carry  into  practical  effect  the  teachings  of  those  ad- 
vocating isolation  of  consumptives  for  the  purpose  of  diminishing 
or  destroying  the  danger  of  infection,  although  it  is  admitted 
that,  theoretically,  the  isolation  of  all  consumptives  would  do 
much  to  lessen  the  quantity  of  tubercular  bacilli  floating  in  the 
air — and  thereby  the  danger  of  infection.  Practically,  the  same 
favorable  results  would  be  obtained  if  the  lessons  taught  by  Dr. 
George  Cornet's  experiments  should  be  made  the  basis  for  proper 
teachings  regarding  the  expectorations  not  only  of  people  known 
to  be  consumptives,  but  of  all  persons  suffering  from  prolonged 
coughing  depending,  apparently,  upon  other  deranged  con- 


APPENDIX.  279 


ditions  of  the  human  system.  We  know  that  the  source  of  con- 
tagion is  contained  in  the  sputa  ;  we  also  know  that  as  long  as 
these  expectorations  remain  in  a  moist  state  they  are  not  apt  to 
infect  anybody,  but  that  the  dry  sputa,  becoming  pulverized, 
allowing  the  poisonous  germs  to  be  carried  away  into  the  sur- 
rounding atmosphere — are  alone  responsible  for  the  dissemination 
of  the  disease.  The  short  pamphlet  issued  by  the  Board  of 
Health  of  the  city  of  New  York  regarding  this  matter  gives  most 
excellent  instructions,  and  it  seems  to  the  writer  to  be  an  act 
of  vital  importance  for  this  society  to  do  its  share  that  these 
instructions,  or  others  of  a  similar  character,  be  published  by 
every  health  officer  or  by  every  county  society  of  this  State.  To 
obtain  the  views  of  the  most  advanced  phthiso-therapeutists  the 
writer  entered  into  correspondence  with  some  of  them.  Dr.  Her- 
mann Weber,  of  London,  England,  writes,  under  date  of  Jan- 
uary 2,  1890  :  "In  answer  to  your  note  I  beg  to  say  that  it 
would  not  only  be  a  great  cruelty  to  isolate  consumptive  patients, 
but  it  would  also  be  an  impossibility."  Dr.  P.  Dettweiler's 
answer  is  dated  Naples,  December  24,  1889,  and  reads  :  "  Re- 
garding the  effect  of  isolating  consumptives,  I  can  only  say, 
most  minute  cleanliness,  the  rigorous  use  of  the  spittoon,  and  the 
general  introduction  of  the  blue  flask  are  the  best  means  to  pre- 
vent the  spreading  of  the  disease  ;  isolation  is  unnecessary." 
Dr.  Ernest  Meissen,  of  Falkenstein,  Germany,  writes,  December 
19,  1889,  as  follows  :  "The  isolation  of  consumptives  is  cruel, 
not  practical,  and  unnecessary."  Dr.  Cornet's  investigations  have 
proved  the  latter.  Every  possible  effort  should  be  made,  of 
course,  to  destroy  the  dangerous  tubercle  bacilli,  and  thanks  to 
Cornet  we  are  now  in  a  position  to  do  that  much  more  effectually 
than  formerly.  The  term  "  intelligent  spitting  "  does  not  sound 
pleasant,  but  these  two  words  express  best  what  will  do  most 
to  diminish  the  number  of  the  germs,  producing  pulmonary  con- 
sumption, floating  in  the  air  which  we  breathe.  If  in  hospitals 
and  private  practice  sufficient  attention  would  be  given  to  this 
most  important  matter,  great  progress  would  be  made  toward  low- 
ering the  death-rate  from  pulmonary  consumption.  It  is  our  most 
solemn  duty  as  physicians  to  see  to  it  that  the  public  is  not  only 
duly  instructed  about  the  value  of  intelligent  spitting,  but  also 
that  it  is  carried  into  practice.  The  blue  flask  referred  to  by  my 


280  APPENDIX. 


friend  Dr.  Dettweiler  is  intended  for  use  among  consumptives  ;  it 
has  been  devised  by  him  and  was  exhibited  at  the  last  medical 
congress  of  German  physicians,  held  at  Wiesbaden  in  April,  1889. 
The  writer  fully  appreciates  the  importance  of  Dr.  Dettweiler's 
invention  and  takes  pleasure  in  presenting  the  blue  flask  to  you 
for  your  inspection  and  consideration.  There  may  be  room  for 
improvement  in  the  make-up  of  the  flask,  but  the  principle  in- 
volved in  its  use  is  of  the  greatest  magnitude,  and  it  is  to  be 
hoped  that  the  lesson  which  its  use  teaches  will  be  carried 
by  you  into  every  household  where  consumption  exists,  and  that 
the  patients  will  be  so  thoroughly  impressed  with  its  importance 
that  spittoons  partly  filled  with  appropriate  fluid  and  frequently 
cleaned  will  soon  be  found  in  every  room,  and  that  patients  will 
know  what  to  do  to  relieve  their  friends  of  the  danger  of  becoming 
infected  by  their  carelessness.  Permit  me,  at  this  time,  to  digress 
for  one  moment  from  the  subject  under  consideration  to  pay  a 
well-earned  tribute  of  gratitude  and  admiration  to  the  memory  of 
the  late  Dr.  Hermann  Brehmer,  of  Goerbersdorf.  He  died  just 
before  my  letter,  asking  for  his  opinion  regarding  the  isolation, 
reached  Goerbersdorf.  The  medical  profession  loses,  by  his 
death,  one  of  its  brightest  stars,  and  those  especially  interested 
in  the  subject  of  phthisis-otherapy  their  foremost  teacher,  writer, 
and  active  practical  worker.  For  over  thirty-five  years  Dr. 
Brehmer  conducted  his  now  world-renowned  institute  for  the 
cure  of  consumpives  in  Goerbersdorf.  Beginning  with  almost  no 
capital  and  upon  the  smallest  scale,  his  institution  has  grown  to  a 
most  marvellous  extent,  and  more  than  fourteen  thousand  patients 
have  visited  it  during  the  last  three  decades.  Of  Dr.  Brehmer's 
writings  the  most  important  are:  "  Chronic  Pulmonary  Consump- 
tion and  Tuberculosis  of  the  Lungs — its  Cause  and  Cure," 
published  in  1857  ;  "Etiology  of  Chronic  Pulmonary  Consump- 
tion," 1885;  "The  Treatment  of  Chronic  Pulmonary  Con- 
sumption," 1886  ;  second  edition,  enlarged,  1889  ;  and  his  latest 
work,  "  Communications  from  Dr.  Brehmer's  Institution  for  the 
Cure  of  Consumptives  in  Goebersdorf,"  1889.  Strongly  opposed 
to  isolation  of  consumptives  for  the  purpose  of  diminishing  the 
spread  of  the  disease  the  writer  is  one  of  the  most  enthusiastic 
advocates  of  the  separation  of  consumptives  from  the  healthy, 
and  their  removal  to  institutions,  properly  located  and  conducted, 
and  conducted  solely  for  the  cure  of  this  class  of  patients. 


APPENDIX.  28l 


CREASOTE  IN  PHTHISIS  AND  TUBERCULOSIS. 

Professor  Sommerbrodt,  says  the  Medical  Press  in  a  recent 
issue,  is  an  enthusiastic  believer  in  the  special  virtues  of  creasote 
in  phthisis  and  pulmonary  tuberculosis.  After  an  extensive  use 
of  the  drug  he  gives  us  statistics  of  five  thousand  cases  he  has 
treated  in  hospital.  He  claims  for  it  the  power  of  improving  the 
appetite,  limiting  the  secretions,  and  diminishing  the  irritable 
cough.  Its  primary  virtue,  however,  is  its  anti-bacterian  prop- 
erty, which  checks  the  progress  of  the  baneful  disorder.  He 
supports  his  belief  by  pointing  to  Guttman's  bacterian  experi- 
ments with  the  tubercular  bacilli,  which  he  cultivated  in  glycerine 
and  destroyed  with  a  1:4,000  solution  of  creasote.  From  this 
experiment  Guttman  himself  reasoned  that,  if  he  could  get  this 
quantity  into  the  circulation  without  injury  to  the  organism,  he 
might  be  able  to  arrest  the  progress  of  the  bacilli ;  but  when  he 
considered  that  a  man  of  60  kilos.  (160  pounds)  contained  4,615 
grammes  of  blood  (9  pounds),  that  would  mean  upward  of  one 
gramme  of  creasote  to  be  present  in  the  circulation  before  any 
good  effect  could  be  expected. 

This  again  bears  out  my  view.  There  are  several  antisep- 
tics and  drugs  that  destroy  micro-organisms,  and  creasote, 
like  corrosive  sublimate,  is  among  the  most  powerful,  but  it 
cannot  be  used  in  sufficient  quantities,  as  I  have  explained 
elsewhere,  without  destroying  the  patient.  When  the  dis- 
ease has  advanced  to  a  stage  where  tissues  are  destroyed,  the 
loss  cannot  under  any  circumstances  be  made  good,  but  the 
disease  may  be  checked  if  the  microbes  are  destroyed,  and  to 
accomplish  that  the  whole  of  the  tissues  must  be  permeated, 
as  they  may  be  with  the  Microbe  Killer. — W.  R. 


PROTECTION  AGAINST  MICROBES. 

A  correspondent  of  the  New  York  Herald,  writing  from 
Paris,  said  recently : 

Microbiological  researches  are  one  of  the  leading  preoccu- 
pations of  the  scientific  period  in  which  we  are  now  living. 
The  incessant  publications  to  which  they  give  rise  are  there 
to  witness  that  this  study  has  not  lost  any  of  its  popularity 


282  APPENDIX. 


among  those  who  take  pleasure  in  penetrating  into  the  territory 
of  the  infinitely  small.  A  Russian  savant,  M.  Metchnikoff,  has 
recently  been  studying  the  role  that  animal  cells  take  as  regard 
the  microbes  in  the  organism.  In  his  opinion  this  role  is  essen- 
tially a  defensive  one,  and  the  cells  are  charged  with  a  function, 
phagocytosis,  which  leads  toward  an  incessant  destruction  of  the 
microbian  species.  According  to  this  hypothesis,  immunity, 
natural  or  acquired,  is  nothing  but  the  result  prepared  before- 
hand of  the  individual  influence  wrought  in  this  way  by  the  cells. 
This  is  an  ingenious  theory,  and  one  that  deserves  to  take  a 
certain  rank,  although  it  is  not  yet  possible  to  foresee  for  it  any 
proof  either  present  or  future. 

Another  question  very  closely  related  to  this  one  is  that  of  the 
action  that  the  blood  has  on  microbes.  It  appears  that  this  influ- 
ence is  a  reality,  and  that  it  is  a  distinctive  one  as  regards  certain 
varieties  of  bacteria,  but  it  only  manifests  itself  under  certain 
conditions.  It  reaches  its  maximum  when  the  blood  is  fresh,  and 
disappears  entirely  when  it  is  in  an  opposite  condition  ;  it  also 
disappears  when  the  blood  has  been  heated  to  a  temperature  of 
55  degrees  C. 

Of  the  two  constituent  elements  of  the  blood,  plasma  or 
globules,  which  can  claim  this  action  ?  Some  very  precise 
experiments  authorize  us  to  pronounce  in  favor  of  the  plasma- 
Besides,  it  seems  highly  probable  that  this  destructive  action  is 
more  particularly  the  attribute  of  a  substance  belonging  to  the 
class  of  diastases,  and  which  enters  into  the  composition  of  this 
plasma. 

However  this  may  be,  the  established  antagonism  between  the 
blood  and  the  microbes  appears  to  have  a  certain  importance  in 
connection  with  general  pathology,  for  we  are  warranted  in  believ- 
ing that  this  beneficial  action  of  the  blood  manifests  itself  in 
many  different  circumstances  by  supplying  the  organism  with 
means  that  enable  it  to  fight  until  the  invading  microbes  are 
completely  destroyed,  or,  at  any  rate,  until  they  are  finally  illu- 
minated (urinary  crisis).  These  methods  of  indirect  struggle 
might  be  considered  as  similar,  although  on  a  large  scale,  to 
those  which  medical  therapeutics  is  constantly  using ;  and  we 
may  conclude  that  if  the  plasma,  or  liquid  portion  of  the  blood, 
is  a  destructive  agent  of  the  microbes,  or  if,  at  least,  it  paralyzes 


APPENDIX.  283 


their  development,  therapeutics  should  have  as  its  principal  aim 
the  rendering  of  the  blood  plasma,  or,  better  still,  of  the  blood, 
sufficiently  rich  and  active  to  insure  that  the  result  of  the  conflict 
between  the  microbes  and  it  may  not  be  disastrous. 

The  richer  and  more  active  the  blood  the  greater  the  chances 
of  its  overpowering  the  microbes  which  may  penetrate  into  the 
organism,  and  of  destroying  them. 


THE  MICROBE  IN  CANCER. 

It  may  reasonably  be  questioned  whether  much  good,  if 
any,  is  done  by  discussing  the  nature  of  disease  and  the 
properties  of  drugs  in  the  daily  newspapers.  The  too  com- 
mon use  by  the  people  of  -agents  like  cocaine,  antipyrine, 
and  others  has  been  largely  due  to  that  form  of  publishing 
information  respecting  them.  Such  information  must  neces- 
sarily be  limited,  and  certainly  people  are  unwise  to  dose 
themselves  with  dangerous  poisons,  or  to  use  them  in  any 
way  without  the  advice  of  some  one  who  is  legally  responsi- 
ble and  presumably  competent  to  advise. 

But  sometimes  it  is  possible  to  pick  out  of  the  lay  journals 
notes  from  men  of  science  which  are  not  without  merit.  Of 
such,  the  following  is  worthy  of  quotation  here,  it  having 
appeared  in  the  Paris  edition  of  the  New  York  Herald.  The 
writer  says : 

Mr.  Inglis  Parsons,  physician  to  Chelsea  Hospital,  London,  is 
a  particularly  energetic  opponent  of  the  theory  of  a  microbian 
origin  of  cancer.  In  his  opinion,  all  the  cells  of  our  organism 
possess,  but  in  a  latent  form,  the  power  of  multiplying  their  num- 
ber in  an  abnormal  way,  and  of  producing  unshapely  growths — 
of  creating  new  tissues,  in  a  word.  But  in  our  normal  condition 
this  power  does  not  manifest  its  existence  unless  the  above-men- 
tioned cells  are  acted  on  by  some  wound  or  form  of  irritation. 
But,  in  such  cases  as  these,  the  action  of  the  nervous  system 
intervenes  ;  it  does  so  to  regulate  the  formation  of  new  tissue, 
and  to  make  it  pass  through  its  process  of  development  in  a 
normal  fashion. 

But  if,  for  some  reason  or  other,  the  nervous  system  is  not 


284  APPENDIX. 


capable  of  fulfilling  this  regulating  function,  the  cells  acquire  an 
independent  existence,  and  can  construct  abnormal  tissues  such 
as  cancers. 

According  to  this  theory,  then,  cancer  is  a  derivative  of  the 
normal  cells  of  our  organism,  but  of  cells  which  have  eluded  the 
restraining  action  of  the  nervous  system.  This  is  nothing  but 
pure  hypothesis,  and  has  nothing  in  its  favor  but  the  frequency 
of  the  occurrence  of  cancer  in  persons  whose  nervous  system  is 
depressed. 

This  theory,  it  is  easy  to  see,  is  a  great  way  removed  from  the 
doctrine  of  the  microbian  origin  of  cancer.  But  this  idea  is 
not  at  all  calculated  to  discourage  us  ;  quite  the  contrary,  for  it 
will  be  readily  understood  that,  if  we  could  succeed  in  finding 
some  means  of  bringing  the  cells  that  are  being  irritated  back 
into  the  power  of  the  nervous  system  by  stimulating  its  action, 
we  might  be  able  to  prevent  their  abnormal  development,  or,  at 
any  rate,  to  keep  it  within  moderate  bounds. 

This  should  give  fresh  courage  to  investigators.  It  is  certain 
that  the  task  is  not  easy,  and  that  the  goal  is  a  long  way  off,  but 
it  is  not  possible  to  admit  that  a  disease  which  causes  such  rav- 
ages among  mankind  will  continue  much  longer  to  be  such  a 
mystery  both  as  to  its  cause  and  as  to  its  treatment.  However 
strange  and  startling  may  seem  the  theories  that  are  in  vogue  at 
the  present  day  about  the  cause  of  cancer,  it  is  the  physician's 
duty  to  examine  them  all,  and  to  carry  out  experiments  whereby 
their  value  may  be  tested.  There  will  be  no  means  of  succeeding 
but  this,  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that,  with  the  wonderful  impetus 
that  has  been  given  to  science  in  our  times,  nothing  will  be 
impossible  from  now  on. 

This  question  of  the  origin  of  cancer  is  so  absorbing,  since  the 
course  of  action  to  be  followed  in  treating  this  disheartening 
disease  depends  on  its  solution,  that  I  thought  it  would  interest 
the  readers  of  the  Herald  to  know  what  is  thought  about  it  by 
one  of  the  most  distinguished  histologists  of  Paris,  Dr.  Brault, 
Chef  de  Laboratoire  &  la  Faculte*  de  Paris,  me'decin  des  hdpitaux  ; 
and  I  give  below  the  memorandum  which  Dr.  Brault  has  drawn 
up  for  me  on  the  subject  in  reply  to  my  request. 

M.  Brault's  ideas  are  very  suggestive,  and  come  from  a  man 
whose  competence  in  such  matters  is  considerable.  If  the  writer 


APPENDIX,  285 


gives  no  definite  conclusions,  or,  rather,  if  he  ends  his  article 
without  any  practical  deductions,  at  leasthe  emits  the  ingenious 
theory  that  cancerous  cells  may  take  the  part  of  of  microbes,  and 
that  the  defensive  reaction  which  takes  place  in  viscera  that  are 
invaded  by  them  may  be  directed  against  these  cancerous  cells. 

Consequently,  the  adversaries  of  the  microbian  theory  of 
cancer,  whatever  may  be  the  hypothesis  they  uphold,  seem  to 
foresee  a  means  of  our  protecting  ourselves  against  this  disease. 
According  to  this  idea,  after  a  long  period  of  despair  and  aban- 
don, we  are  now  about  to  enter  into  a  new  phase — that  of  hope. 

THE    ORIGIN    AND    CONTAGIOUS   NATURE    OF    CANCER. 

"  There  is,  at  the  present  moment,  a  tendency  to  believe  that 
tumors,  and  particularly  those  which  are  termed  cancers,  are 
caused  by  some  parasitic  action  similar  to  that  observed  in  the 
various  infectious  diseases.  On  what  basis  is  this  supposition 
founded  ?  Simply  on  this  fact,  that  it  is  proved  that  tumors,  in 
spreading,  follow  the  natural  channels  of  the  circulation,  and 
that  they  are  found  in  the  depths  of  the  substance  of  viscera  that 
are  far  removed  from  the  primitive  seat  of  the  neoplasm. 

"  This  fact  cannot  be  denied,  but  does  it  follow  that  the  inter- 
pretation usually  made  of  it  is  a  correct  one  ?  We  think  not.-  In 
an  article  published  several  years  ago  in  the  Archives  Gtntrales 
de  Mtdecine  of  1885,  'On  the  Non-Bacterian  Origin  of  Carci- 
noma,' we  opposed  the  idea  that  has  since  been  defended  by 
Scheurlen  and  Rapin  as  to  this  supposed  role  of  the  bacteria. 
We  say  supposed  role,  as  the  publications  of  the  writers  we  have 
just  cited  contain  no  direct  proof  in  support  of  their  theory. 
In  our  mtmoire,  after  having  compared  the  way  in  which  the 
evolution  of  microbian  diseases  is  accomplished  to  the  develop- 
ment of  tumors,  we  ended  by  the  conclusion  that  these  two  forms 
of  pathblogical  disorders  are  in  constant  opposition  from  the 
beginning  of  their  existence  to  the  end. 

"  Let  us  see  what  the  distinctive  characteristics  are  of  these  two 
forms  of  disease,  considered  in  their  simplest  form.  In  infec- 
tious diseases  the  parasites  give  rise  in  the  viscera  to  inflamma- 
tion, temporary  or  prolonged — temporary  in  typhoid  fever  and 
in  the  greater  part  of  suppurative  complaints  ;  prolonged  in 
tuberculosis,  for  instance.  The  end  of  these  inflammations  is 


286  APPENDIX. 


marked  by  a  more  or  less  complete  destruction  of  the  viscera 
that  are  attacked.  Notwithstanding  this,  restoration  can  take 
place  and  healing  can  be  expected.  In  running  over  the  long 
series  of  microbian  diseases,  it  is  easy  to  acquire  the  conviction 
that  the  entire  energy  of  our  organism  is  represented  by  the 
struggle  between  our  tissues  and  the  invading  microbes.  If  the 
fight  lasts  on,  the  viscera  become  hardened  by  continued  accu- 
mulation of  materials  destined  to  repair  losses  or  to  isolate  the 
foreign  body  ;  materials  which  are  borrowed  from  the  fibrous 
framework  of  the  viscera. 

"  But  in  cancers,  on  the  other  hand,  what  do  we  see  ?  On  the 
surface  of  the  mucous  membranes,  or  in  the  interior  part  of  the 
glands,  we  find  the  cells  of  which  they  are  formed  multiplying  to 
such  an  extent  that  in  a  short  time  they  spread  beyond  the  limits 
of  the  mucous  membranes,  or  of  the  walls  of  the  glands.  Then 
the  cells,  released  from  all  restraint,  insinuate  themselves  into 
every  vacant  space  they  find  in  their  path,  reach  the  vessels,  and 
are  carried  away  by  the  blood,  or  by  the  lymph,  to  invade  the 
viscera  or  the  ganglia. 

"  This  is  by  no  means  an  hypothesis,  but  a  fact,  the  truth 
of  which  has  been  proved,  and  can  be  readily  checked  by  any 
one  desiring  to  do  so.  In  the  new  sppts  which  they  have  chosen 
for  their  abode,  the  cells  that  have  been  transplanted  go  to  work 
and  construct  glandular  tubes  or  flat  surfaces  of  mucous  cells, 
which  have  the  most  striking  resemblance  to  the  elements  of  the 
tissue  that  gave  them  birth.  We  draw  special  attention  to  these 
facts,  as  the  entire  discussion  is  based  on  them.  We  say  it  a 
second  time — what  we  find  in  secondary  tumors  of  the  liver, 
lungs,  or  whatever  the  organ  may  be,  is  by  no  means  an  agglom- 
eration of  microbes,  or  bacteria,  but  cells,  cells  entirely  similar  to 
those  of  the  pancreas,  stomach,  or  skin,  according  to  whether  the 
pancreas,  stomach,  or  skin  was  the  seat  of  the  primitive  cancerous 
growth. 

"  The  introduction  of  the  microbian  idea  into  the  problem  is 
certainly  powerless  to  explain  the  transplantation  of  cells  from 
one  organ  to  another,  and,  besides  this,  the  track  followed  by  the 
elements  that  have  been  transplanted  can  sometimes  be  followed 
from  their  starting-point  to  their  journey's  end  without  a  break 
in  the  chain.  Nor  can  the  role  of  the  bacteria  be  a  direct  one, 


APPENDIX.  287 


as  microbes  are  unable  to  produce  cellular  elements  differing 
from  their  own  structure,  and  we  know  by  the  general  law  which 
governs  the  development  of  all  beings  that  every  cell  springs 
from  a  cell  of  the  same  species  as  itself. 

"  Quite  the  contrary.  Whenever  bacteria  (vegetable  cells)  find 
themselves  in  the  presence  of  the  cells  of  man  or  of  animals 
a  conflict  arises  between  the  two,  which  can  only  end  by  the 
total  destruction  of  the  one  by  the  other.  There  are  but  few  ex- 
ceptions to  this  rule,  and  even  they  are  more  apparent  than  real, 
but  it  will  not  be  possible  for  us  to  develop  this  point  of  the 
subject  as  it  deserves. 

"  The  multiplication  of  cancerous  cells  in  an  organ  situated  at  a 
distance  from  the  organ  that  gave  them  birth,  is  always  preceded 
by  what  might  be  termed  a  process  of  cellular  grafting.  The 
cells  that  have  been  transplanted  on  to  a  new  spot  develop  at  its 
expense,  like  any  other  form  of  parasites.  Consequently  in  can- 
cerous tumors  the  only  infecting  and  invading  agents  are  the  cells 
themselves.  It  is  against  them  that  the  organ  tries  to  defend 
itself. 

"  The  question  of  the  contagious  character  of  cancer  has  been 
discussed  latterly  to  a  considerable  extent,  but  the  cases  that 
have  been  published  to  prove  the  idea  have  so  far  been  not  at  all 
conclusive,  and  it  will  be  necessary  to  await  future  developments. 
Still,  we  must  add  in  closing  that,  as  a  firm  believer  in  the  process 
of  cellular  grafting,  we  do  not  see  a  priori  that  any  objection  can 
be  made  to  the  idea  of  grafting  by  contact  ;  and  it  is  our  opinion, 
a  fortiori,  that  some  day  the  feasibility  of  inoculating  cancer  will 
be  experimentally  proved,  particularly  if  care  be  taken  to  experi- 
ment with  animals  of  one  and  the  same  species. 

"Dr.  BRAULT, 
"  Me"decin  des  Hopitaux  de  Paris." 


M.  PASTEUR  ON  HYDROPHOBIA. 

The  following  article  over  the  signature  of  the  celebrated 
French  experimenter  appeared  not  long  since  in  a  New  York 
paper,  and  it  will  repay  perusal.  In  every  thing  connected 
with  the  immediate  subject  of  his  investigations  M.  Pasteur's 
opinions  must  have  weight,  and  he  entirely  sustains  me  in 


288  APPENDIX. 


my  theory  of  the  cause  of  disease.  It  would  have  been 
better  if  he  had  omitted  the  statement  that  the  origin  of  life 
is  outside  the  sphere  of  scientific  inquiry,  for  in  that  he  errs, 
and  his  views  as  to  the  origin  of  rabies  do  not  require  it. 
Says  M.  Pasteur: 

Rabies  is  a  disease  which  has  been  known  from  the  earliest 
times.  The  dog  may  give  it  to  the  man  and  to  domestic  animals. 
Animals,  again,  may  communicate  it  to  each  other.  At  the  time 
of  writing  this  paper,  rabies  is  raging  in  England  in  a  herd  of 
deer  in  the  park  of  the  Marquis  of  Bristol  at  Ickworth.  The 
herd  was  composed  of  five  hundred  animals,  and  two  hundred  of 
them  have  died  already,  though  the  disease  still  rages.  A  rabid 
dog  found  the  way  into  the  .park  during  the  month  of  April  last, 
bit  several  animals,  which  died  of  rabies,  but  only  after  they  had 
bitten  a  large  number  of  their  fellows. 

A  short  time  ago  our  knowledge  of  this  disease  was  still  sur- 
rounded by  many  popular  fallacies.  Old  writings,  recent  papers 
even,  state  that  rabies  may  originate  spontaneously,  and  the 
occasional  causes  producing  the  disease  are  likewise  described. 
In  the  streets  of  certain  towns  one  may  see  along  the  walls,  in 
the  summer-time,  small  tin  vessels  filled  with  water  in  order  that 
dogs  may  satisfy  their  thirst.  Many  think  that  unless  such  pre- 
cautions are  taken,  some  animals  may  become  rabid.  Neverthe- 
less it  is  a  fact  that,  in  whatever  physiological  or  pathological 
conditions  a  dog  or  any  other  animal  is  placed,  rabies  never 
makes  its  appearance  in  that  animal  unless  it  has  been  bitten  or 
licked  by  another  suffering  from  rabies  at  the  time  the  wound 
was  inflicted.  Every  person  who  is  of  opinion  that  rabies  may 
originate  spontaneously — an  opinion  I  am  even  now  fighting 
against — will  at  once  answer  :  "  But  there  must  have  been,  at 
some  time  or  other,  one  first  animal  spontaneously  afflicted  with 
rabies."  That  answer  simply  opens  up  the  whole  question  of  the 
origin  of  things,  a  question  which  is  altogether  outside  the  domain 
of  scientific  investigations.  Whence  came  the  first  man  ?  Whence 
came  the  first  oak  tree  ?  Nobody  knows,  and  it  is  useless  to  dis- 
cuss such  mysteries.  Observation  alone  shows  us  that  rabies 
never  originates  spontaneously.  Nobody  has  ever  proved  the 
existence  of  spontaneous  rabies,  though  many  have  attributed  to 
it  the  symptoms  of  epilepsy,  a  disease  frequently  met  with  in  the 


APPENDIX.  289 


canine  species.  Further,  it  never  breaks  out  in  any  country 
unless  introduced  there  by  an  animal  bitten  in  another  place 
where  rabies  is  endemic.  Many  islands  in  the  Pacific  Ocean  are 
quite  free  from  it.  It  is  not  met  with  in  the  wide  Australian 
continent,  Norway,  or  Lapland.  And  yet  these  countries  will  be 
free  of  it  only  as  long  as  they  take  proper  measures  to  prevent 
the  introduction  of  dogs  which,  after  being  bitten  in  another 
country,  carry  the  virus  with  them  in  a  latent  form. 

Moreover,  it  is  not  difficult  to  prove  that  rabies  is  a  disease 
which  cannot  appear  de  novo  under  any  physiological  conditions, 
and  that  its  spontaneous  origin  is  quite  impossible.  We  know 
nowadays  that  contagious  or  virulent  affections  are  caused  by 
small  microscopic  beings  which  are  called  microbes.  The  anthrax 
of  cattle,  the  malignant  pustule  of  man,  are  produced  by  microbes  ; 
croup  is  produced  by  a  microbe.  The  microbe  of  rabies  has  not 
been  isolated  as  yet,  but,  judging  by  analogy,  we  must  believe  in 
its  existence.  To  resume  :  every  virus  is  a  microbe. 

Although  these  beings  are  of  infinite  smallness,  the  conditions 
of  their  life  and  propagation  are  subject  to  the  same  general  laws 
which  regulate  the  birth  and  multiplication  of  the  higher  animal 
and  vegetable  beings.  They,  like  the  latter,  never  have  a  spon- 
taneous origin.  Like  the  latter,  they  are  derived  from  beings 
similar  to  themselves.  It  has  been  proved,  without  the  shadow 
of  a  doubt,  that,  in  the  present  state  of  science,  the  belief  in 
spontaneous  generation  is  a  chimera.  If  it  be  said  that  life  must 
have  appeared  on  this  earth  spontaneously  at  some  period  or 
other,  I  must  repeat  the  statement  which  I  made  just  now,  namely, 
that  the  origin  of  all  things  on  earth  is  hidden  behind  an  impene- 
trable veil.  In  short,  rabies  is  not  a  spontaneous  disease. 

As  it  is  always  due  to  the  direct  inoculation  of  its  virus  by  a 
rabid  animal,  it  is  easy  to  understand  that  simple  police  measures 
will  suffice  to  stamp  out  this  horrible  disease.  Two  or  three 
years  would  perhaps  be  enough  to  eradicate  it,  if  owners  were 
compelled  to  muzzle  their  dogs,  or  to  lead  them  by  a  string  when 
in  the  streets. 

Everybody,  medical  men  especially,  agree  in  thinking  that 
rabies,  in  man  at  least,  is  an  incurable  disease.  If  a  man  be  bit- 
ten by  a  rabid  animal  in  such  a  manner  that  he  must  necessarily 
die  of  rabies,  his  health  may  nevertheless  remain  perfectly  good 
19 


2QO  APPENDIX. 


for  several  weeks,  though  the  treacherous  virus  creeps  on  in  his 
body,  carried  by  the  blood  or  finding  its  way  along  the  nerves. 
Lastly,  it  invades  the  nervous  centres.  It  is  always  found  there 
first,  and  from  thence  it  passes  into  the  salivary  glands.  The 
first  symptoms  now  make  their  appearance  :  fear  of  water  and  of 
all  liquids,  intense  headaches,  spasms  of  the  throat,  dilated  pupils, 
haggard  eyes,  severe  pain  or  mere  itching  at  the  seat  of  the  bite. 
In  rare  cases  the  patient  tries  to  bite  ;  if  so,  he  bites  the  bed- 
clothes, but  only  seldom  the  people  near  him.  He  expectorates 
frequently,  while  convulsive  movements  follow  on  the  slightest 
breath  or  draught  of  air.  He  is  afraid  of  shining  objects,  and 
the  slightest  noise  causes  him  to  start.  These  are  some  of  the 
striking  signs  of  the  disease. .  If  one  or  several  of  these  morbid 
symptoms  make  their  appearance,  rabies  has  fairly  begun,  and, 
whatever  may  be  done,  it  follows  its  own  independent  and  fatal 
course.  Death,  sometimes  preceded  by  horrible  sufferings  and 
by  indescribable  maniacal  attacks  of  fury,  shortly  follows. 

Strange  to  say,  this  disease,  on  which  all  the  resources  of  medi- 
cine have  no  effect,  has  been  treated  in  all  countries  by  an  endless 
number  of  remedies,  all  supposed  to  be  infallible.  There  is  no 
country  in  Europe  or  America,  be  it  small  or  large,  in  which  per- 
sons are  not  to  be  found  who  are  supposed  to  be  able  to  cure 
rabies,  or  in  which  practices  which  are  said  to  prevent  the  occur- 
rence of  the  disease  may  not  be  studied.  Such  erroneous  beliefs 
are  widely  spread.  The  idea  on  which  such  practices  are  based 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  it  is  difficult  for  men  in  general  to  apply 
to  their  knowledge  of  facts,  which  are  more  or  less  mysterious  in 
their  nature,  and  the  causation  of  which  is  unexplained,  the 
precepts  derived  from  experimental  methods.  The  human  mind 
is  always  struck  by  any  thing  which  appears  to  be  marvellous.  A 
man,  for  instance,  will  often  believe  the  quack  who  tells  him  that 
a  stone  of  a  certain  kind,  or  a  plant,  will  prevent  the  evil  effects 
of  a  bite  from  a  rabid  animal,  provided  this  stone  or  plant  be 
merely  placed  in  contact  with  the  wound.  He  may  say  even  that 
he  has  personally  experienced  the  good  effects  of  such  a  practice 
if  rabies  has  not  followed  the  application  of  the  remedy  to  one 
patient.  He  forgets  that  to  draw  such  a  conclusion  must  neces- 
sarily be  a  mistake,  simply  because  every  bite  from  a  rabid 
animal  is  not  always  followed  by  the  breaking  out  of  the  disease 
in  the  person  so  bitten. 


APPENDIX.  291 


Now,  suppose  a  hundred  people  to  have  been  bitten  by  rabid 
animals,  how  many  will  die  of  this  terrible  disease  ?  It  is  difficult 
to  answer  such  a  question.  Moreover,  the  number  of  victims 
varies,  for  several  reasons.  Nevertheless,  it  is  generally  supposed 
that  if  the  deaths  taking  place  among  a  large  number  of  persons 
bitten  by  rabid  animals  be  added  up,  and  if  their  seat  and  gravity 
be  next  taken  into  account,  the  mortality  among  persons  bitten 
amounts  to  15  to  20  per  cent.  In  other  words,  more  than  eighty 
out  of  a  hundred  persons  suffer  no  evil  effects  from  the  bite.  It 
is  easy,  therefore,  to  be  deceived  as  to  the  value  of  any  preventive 
remedy.  For  if  we  apply  it  to  a  small  number  of  persons  it  will 
seem  to  have  been  successful  in  four  cases  out  of  five.  Is  that 
not  more  than  sufficient  to  warrant  a  quack,  whose  advice  is 
taken,  to  say  that  his  remedy  is  infallible,  and  to  cause  men  to 
blindly  share  his  belief  ? 

The  experimental  method  judges  facts  more  severely.  That 
method  teaches  us  that  if  we  are  to  believe  in  the  efficacy  of  a 
preventive  remedy  against  rabies  among  persons  bitten  by  rabid 
animals,  it  would  be  necessary,  in  the  first  place,  to  discover  a 
process  enabling  the  experimenter  to  reproduce  rabies  in  an 
animal  at  will.  A  number  of  dogs  having,  then,  been  inoculated 
with  rabies  according  to  that  process,  would  then  have  to  be 
divided  into  two  batches,  the  remedy  being  applied  to  one  batch, 
and  the  disease  being  allowed  to  run  its  course  unopposed  in  the 
other  until  death  followed.  It  would  be  easy  to  compare  the 
course  of  the  disease  in  the  two  lots,  and  the  action  of  the  remedy 
could  thus  be  conclusively  demonstrated,  provided  rabies  and 
death  did  not  follow  on  the  introduction  of  the  virus  into  animals 
treated  by  the  remedy.  We  have  tested  in  this  way  remedies 
which  are  supposed  to  be  able  to  prevent  the  occurrence  of 
rabies,  but  we  have  never  obtained  satisfactory  results. 

It  is  not  so  easy  as  one  might  think  at  first  to  inoculate  a  series 
of  animals  with  rabies  successfully.  We  have  already  called 
attention  to  the  fact  that  if  dogs  be  bitten  by  rabid  animals  the 
disease  does  not  appear  in  all  of  them.  A  direct  subcutaneous 
inoculation  of  the  saliva  of  a  rabid  dog  is  hardly  more  successful. 
The  saliva  contains,  together  with  the  microbe  of  hydrophobia, 
other  microbes  of  different  kinds,  which  may  give  rise  to  abscesses 
and  other  morbid  complications,  and  thus  prevent  the  occurrence 
of  rabies.  In  short,  only  a  few  years  ago  experimenters  would 


APPENDIX. 


not  have  known  where  to  find  the  virus  in  a  pure  state,  nor  to  use 
it  in  such  a  way  as  to  produce  rabies,  and  nothing  but  rabies. 
Luckily,  these  two  difficulties  were  solved  at  the  same  time  by  the 
following  discovery  :  If  the  autopsy  of  an  animal  dead  of  rabies 
be  made,  and  if  a  small  portion  of  the  brain,  spinal  cord,  or, 
better  perhaps,  of  the  thicker  part  of  the  cord  which  unites  this 
to  the  brain — a  part  which  is  called  medulla  oblongata,  or  bulbous 
— be  taken,  and  if  this  portion  of  the  central  nervous  system  be 
crushed  in  a  sterilized  fluid,  with  all  necessary  antiseptic  precau- 
tions, and  if  a  small  quantity  of  this  fluid  be  now  introduced  on 
the  surface  of  the  brain  of  a  chloroformed  animal  (dog,  rabbit,  or 
guinea-pig)  by  means  of  a  hypodermic  needle,  after  trephining, 
the  animal  thus  inoculated  will  contract  rabies  to  a  certainty,  and 
that  in  a  relatively  short  time — that  is,  in  a  period  not  exceeding 
fifteen  days  or  three  weeks. 

The  method  which  I  published  before  the  Academic  des 
Sciences  de  Paris  on  October  16,  1885,  resembles  in  many  of  its 
general  characteristics  the  method  of  prophylaxis  against  conta- 
gious diseases.  These  methods  are  based  on  the  inoculation  of 
attenuated  virus.  The  injection  of  such  attenuated  virus  inocu- 
lates animals,  and  thus  enables  them  to  resist  the  attack  of  the 
corresponding  virus. 

Every  virus,  or  rather  all  virulent  and  infectious  microbes,  may 
be  attenuated  by  natural  or  artificial  means.  The  virus  of  small- 
pox in  man  is  represented  in  an  attenuated  condition  by  the 
cow-pox  virus  of  bovine  animals.  The  latter  has  been  produced, 
I  am  inclined  to  think,  by  accidental  and  successive  inoculations 
of  human  small-pox  virus  on  the  udders  of  cows,  and  its  present 
state  of  virulence  has  at  last  become  "  fixed  "  'there.  In  the  same 
way  the  virus  of  rabies  is  greatly  modified  by  successive  inocula- 
tions on  monkeys  or  rabbits. 

Similarly  again,  the  fatal  virus  of  anthrax  is  modified  by  the 
action  of  air  and  heat  until  at  last  it  is  thus  rendered  harmless. 
It  passes  through  intermediate  stages,  however,  in  which  it  may 
still  prove  fatal  to  animals  of  small  size,  but  harmless  when 
inoculated  into  domestic  animals,  although  it  inoculates  the  latter 
against  the  attacks  of  the  primitive  fatal  virus.  In  the  same  way 
the  virus  of  rabies  may  be  attenuated  to  any  wished-for  degree  by 
the  action  of  air  and  moderate  heat ;  and  may  then,  when  inocu- 


APPENDIX. 


293 


lated  into  animals,  enable  them  to  resist  the  action  of  the  primitive 
fatal  virus.  In  other  words,  one  may  produce  in  a  dog  a  state  in 
which  it  is  impossible  for  that  animal  to  contract  rabies.  Take  a 
dozen  dogs,  inoculate  them  in  the  manner  which  I  have  just 
mentioned,  and  then  inoculate  them  at  the  surface  of  the  brain 
with  the  pure  virus  of  rabies.  Then  perform  the  same  operation 
at  the  same  time  on  twelve  other  non-inoculated  animals.  Not 
one  of  the  first  dozen  will  contract  the  disease,  but  the  twelve 
other  animals  will  all  die  of  it  after  exhibiting  all  the  various 
symptoms  typical  of  rabies,  and  it  resembles  in  every  particular 
that  produced  by  the  bite  of  a  rabid  animal  wandering  about  the 
streets.  The  experiments  which  I  have  just  mentioned,  and 
which  show  that  dogs  may  be  inoculated  against  rabies,  may  be 
successfully  repeated  on  other  dogs,  even  if  they  have  been 
bitten,  before  the  inoculations  are  begun,  by  rabid  animals,  pro- 
vided too  long  a  period  between  the  time  of  the  bite  and  that  of 
the  protective  inoculations  has  not  elapsed.  The  success  of  such 
a  course  of  treatment  depends  on  the  usually  long  period  of 
time  intervening  between  the  day  of  the  bite  and  the  time  at 
which  the  first  symptoms  of  rabies  show  themselves.  The  immu- 
nity due  to  inoculation  is  produced  in  animals  before  the  epoch 
at  which  the  acute  symptoms  of  rabies  ought  to  appear.  This  is 
indirectly  but  fully  proved  by  the  fact,  that  if  the  period  of 
incubation  in  a  dog  be  much  shortened  our  method  may  not 
prove  successful  in  inoculating  that  animal.  If  the  virus  be,  for 
instance,  inoculated  at  the  surface  of  the  brain,  the  disease  often 
follows  as  early  as  two  weeks  after  the  inoculation.  It  is  notice- 
able that  in  order  to  protect  an  animal  efficiently  under  these 
conditions,  the  whole  process  of  preventive  inoculations  must  be 
carried  on  as  quickly  as  possible  if  that  animal  is  to  be  efficiently 
inoculated  before  the  fatal  symptoms  of  rabies  appear  on  the 
scene. 

Several  years  ago  I  brought  together  at  Villeneuve  1'Etang 
.many  dogs  inoculated  during  the  year  1884,  and  placed  them  in 
a  large  kennel.  After  having  demonstrated  the  fact  that  in  1885 
and  1886  the  larger  number  of  these  animals,  though  not  all 
(eleven  out  of  fourteen  in  1885,  four  out  of  six  in  1886),  had  not 
suffered  any  harm  from  the  inoculation  of  the  rage  des  rues  (street 
rabies),  even  if  the  virus  was  deposited  on  the  surface  of  the 


294  APPENDIX. 


brain,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that,  after  all,  it  was  only  neces- 
sary to  know  whether  such  inoculated  animals  would  be  able  to 
resist  the  action  of  the  virus  when  introduced  by  a  bite.  Accord- 
ingly, in  1887,  1888,  and  1889,  inoculated  animals  were  merely 
bitten  by  dogs  suffering  from  rabies,  and  not  inoculated  under  the 
skull.  In  1887  the  inoculated  dogs  suffered  no  evil  effects  after 
being  inoculated  by  the  bite  of  a  rabid  dog.  In  1888,  five  dogs 
inoculated  in  the  year  1884  were  bitten  in  the  month  of  July, 
together  with  five  non-inoculated  animals.  The  five  inoculated 
animals  are  now  (August,  1889)  still  in  perfect  health,  whereas  of 
the  five  others  three  died  of  rabies  and  two  are  living  now.  At 
the  time  of  writing  (August,  1889)  a  similar  experiment  is  in 
progress  on  another  group  of  animals  inoculated  in  1884.  If 
these  animals  resist^  and  if  all  or  part  of  the  non-inoculated 
animals  die  of  rabies,  it  will  be  a  positive  proof  that  the  artificial 
immunity  against  fresh  bites  from  rabid  animals  may  extend  over 
a  period  exceeding  five  years.  However  great  the  advances  made 
in  our  knowledge  of  the  etiology  and  prophylaxis  of  rabies  among 
animals  may  have  been,  these  results  were  interesting  chiefly 
because  they  justified  us  more  and  more  in  hoping  that  the  pre- 
ventive methods  against  rabies  might  be  successful  in  the  case 
of  men  bitten  by  rabid  animals.  But  the  question  was  how  to 
summon  up  courage  enough  to  make  that  trial  and  to  overstep 
the  frontier  which  separates  man  from  animals. 

The  following  account  is  due  to  the  pen  of  one  who,  in  his 
official  position  of  "  son-in-law,"  has  been  present  through  all  the 
phases  of  that  period — a  period  full  of  anguish  and  dreadful 
perplexities  : 

"On  July  4,  1885,  at  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning,  Joseph 
Meister,  nine  years  of  age,  the  eldest  son  of  a  baker,  living  at 
Steige  (Alsace),  was  going  alone  from  that  village  to  a  neighbor- 
ing school  at  Meissengott.  He  was  walking  along  an  isolated 
path,  a  school-boy's  path,  when  a  dog  rushed  on  him  and  threw 
him  to  the  ground.  The  child  did  not  try  to  offer  any  resist- 
ance, but  covered  his  face  with  his  arms.  The  dog  bit  him, 
rolled  him  over  and  over  and  worried  him.  A  mason  saw  the 
scene  from  some  distance  off,  and  ran  to  the  spot.  Armed  with 
an  iron  bar,  he  beat  the  dog  over  and  over  again  until  the  animal 
ran  away  home  only  to  throw  itself  on  its  owner.  The  owner, 


APPENDIX.  295 


Theodore  Vone,  a  grocer  at  Meissengott,  took  a  gun  and  killed 
the  dog.  Foaming  at  the  mouth,  straw  and  pieces  of  wood  in 
the  stomach  were  there  to  show  that  the  animal  was  presumably 
rabid. 

"  The  parents  of  little  Meister  thought  at  first  that  their  son 
had  been  attacked  by  a  vicious  dog.  The  day  was  spent  in 
washing  and  dressing  the  child's  wounds.  But  in  the  evening, 
frightened  at  what  she  heard — the  accident  the  owner  of  the  dog 
met  with,  the  sudden  determination  of  the  owner  to  kill  the  dog 
with  a  shot  from  his  gun — the  mother  took  her  little  boy  Joseph 
to  Dr.  Weber  at  Voile1.  Dr.  Weber  cauterized  the  wounds, 
although  twelve  hours  had  elapsed  since  the  accident,  and  advised 
Mrs.  Meister  to  start  for  Paris. 

"  They  came  to  the  laboratory  on  Monday,  July  6.  M.  Pas- 
teur was  greatly  distressed  and  affected,  and,  although  fully  con- 
vinced of  the  value  of  his  last  experiments,  the  idea  of  applying 
his  method  for  the  first  time  on  that  child  caused  him  great 
anguish.  He  therefore  went  and  told  Dr.  Vulpian  and  Dr. 
Grancher,  professor  at  the  Faculty  of  Medicine,  his  pupil  and 
friend,  of  the  situation  he  found  himself  face  to  face  with.  Dr. 
Vulpian  and  Dr.  Grancher  came  at  once  and  saw  little  Meister, 
and,  both  of  them  agreeing,  advised  M.  Pasteur  to  try  on  the 
child,  condemned  to  an  almost  certain  death,  the  method  which 
had  always  been  successful  when  applied  to  dogs. 

"A  shepherd  from  the  Jura  named  Jean  Baptiste  Jupille 
came  after  little  Meister.  This  boy  had  been  bitten  by  a  rabid 
dog,  and  arrived  in  order  to  undergo  the  preventive  inoculations 
after  six  days  had  already  elapsed  since  he  had  been  wounded. 
M.  Pasteur  felt  rather  anxious  on  account  of  this  delay  of  six 
days.  But,  although  he  carefully  noted  the  difference  between 
that  space  of  time  and  the  two  days  and  a  half  which  had  elapsed 
from  the  time  little  Meister  had  been  bitten  to  the  beginning  of 
the  inoculations,  M.  Pasteur  hoped  'that  it  was  still  possible  to 
act.  As  rabies  but  rarely  breaks  out  in  man  before  a  period  of 
less  than  one  month  or  six  weeks  after  the  bite,  it  appeared 
possible  that  the  inoculations  might  have  the  time  to  fully 
exert  their  influence,  and  prevent  the  effects  of  the  virus  of 
rabies.  It  is  really  a  question  of  speed.  Rabies  is,  owing  to  the 
relative  length  of  its  period  of  incubation,  like  a  parliamentary 


296  APPENDIX. 


train,  whereas  'the  vaccin,  on  account  of  the  large  amount  which 
is  injected,  passes  it  just  like  an  express  train  passes  a  slow  train, 
and,  after  it  has  once  passed  it,  prevents  the  active  virus  from 
entering  the  human  economy.  Tout  Paris  followed  with  the 
greatest  interest  that  second  experiment  on  Jupille.  In  the  press, 
in  drawing-rooms,  in  cafes,  even  in  the  streets,  everybody  gave 
his  opinion,  sometimes  enthusiastic,  sometimes  reserved,  some- 
times hostile  and  even  abusive,  as  to  the  degree  of  confidence 
which  the  newly  announced  method  deserved.  Like  La  Fon- 
taine's shepherd,  who  had  been  raised  for  one  moment  to  the 
dignity  of  favorite,  he  left  Paris 

"  'Comme  I' on  sortirait  d'un  songe* 

and  went  quietly  back  to  Villers-Farlay. 

"  Then  bitten  persons  arrived  from  all  quarters.  Nobody 
could  have  believed  that  so  many  accidents  could  be  due  to 
rabies. 

"  It  was  at  this  time,  in  the  midst  of  this  crowd  of  people  com- 
ing to  be  inoculated,  that,  on  November  9,  1885,  a  child  ten 
years  old,  little  Louise  Pelletier,  came  to  M.  Pasteur,  after 
having  been  bitten  thirty-seven  days  before.  A  huge  moun- 
tain dog  had  furiously  attacked  her  at  La  Varenne  Saint- 
Hilaire.  Not  only  was  there  a  wound  in  the  armpit,  but  there 
was  another  deep  one  at  the  back  of  the  head.  *  *  *  The 
case  seemed  hopeless.  But  had  there  been  only  one  chance  in  a 
thousand  to  save  this  child  it  would  have  still  been  right  to  make 
a  trial  and  apply  the  method.  *  *  *  The  treatment  had 
come  to  an  end  a  few  days  before,  and  the  child  had  returned  to 
the  lodgings  of  her  parents  in  the  Rue  Dauphine,  had  gone  back 
to  the  life  of  a  hard-working  school-girl,  and  one  might  almost 
have  begun  to  hope  she  was  safe,  when  the  first  symptoms  of 
hydrophobia  made  their  appearance.  The  child  refused  all 
fluids.  The  contractions  of  the  throat  allowed  no  liquids  to 
pass.  The  spasms  of  suffocation  choked  her  speech.  One 
might  have  fancied  one  heard  the  last  sobs  which  follow  in  the 
wake  of  a  child's  fits  of  anger. 

"  In  the  morning  of  December  zd,  a  period  of  calm  appeared, 
which  lasted  eight  hours.  A  struggle  seemed  to  take  place  be- 
tween the  disease  and  the  preventive  inoculations,  which  had 


APPENDIX.  297 


been  begun  again  and  repeated  every  two  hours.  But  the  virus 
had  already  invaded  the  child  too  far.  Rabies  was  too  powerful. 
In  the  evening,  the  disease,  attended  by  its  horrors,  hiccoughs, 
and  hallucinations,  made  further  progress.  The  unfortunate 
little  one  said  she  felt  as  if  water  was  running  all  over  her  body. 
At  times  she  did  not  recognize  her  father,  taking  him  for  a 
stranger  ;  then,  noticing  her  mistake  suddenly,  she  showered 
upon  him  her  excuses  and  caresses.  She  kept  calling  for  M. 
Pasteur,  took  his  hands,  saying  to  him  :  '  Stay  near  my  bed  ;  I 
should  be  afraid  if  you  went  away  !  Oh  !  I  am  so  glad  to  have 
you  near  me.'  The  words  came  by  fits  and  starts  from  her  pant- 
ing throat ;  death  was  creeping  over  her  eyes — the  great  black  eyes 
which  anxiously  watched  you — and  during  these  awful  hours  the 
sister,  who  had  been  removed  from  the  room,  went  on  with  her 
lessons  brought  from  school,  in  the  dining-room,  by  the  light  of  a 
lamp. 

"  On  December  3d  little  Louise  Pelletier  died.  There  was  at 
first  a  rebound  in  public  opinion.  From  all  parts  of  the  horizon 
certain  journalists,  birds  of  evil  omen,  came  running  to  the  spot. 
They  hoped  that  with  the  aid  of  this  change  of  wind  they  would 
drown  the  discovery.  Articles  were  flaunted  about  bearing  as 
title,  '  The  Triumph  of  M.  Pasteur.'  Not  only  did  they  cry 
aloud  that  the  method  was  a  failure,  but  they  even  insinuated 
that  the  death  of  little  Louise  Pelletier  was  due  not  to  the  bites 
of  the  dog,  but  to  the  virus  contained  in  the  fluid  used  for  inocu- 
lations. M.  Pasteur  was  worse  than  a  charlatan  ;  he  was  a  mur- 
derer. The  calumnies  became  more  and  more  virulent.  Just 
think  !  To  cause  people  to  mistrust,  to  despise  that  discovery, 
to  whisper  into  the  ears  of  men  who  had  felt  a  great  patriotic  joy 
and  a  great  humane  hope,  this  pessimistic  conclusion  :  '  Well,  it 
appears  that  all  this  is  untrue.'  That,  for  some  people,  would 
be  a  success  indeed.  These  attacks  were  isolated,  but  on  that 
account  all  the  mere  insolent.  Did  they  succeed  in  preventing 
some  people  from  coming  to  the  laboratory  ?  They  caused  them 
to  hesitate,  at  any  rate.  A  Hungarian  woman,  bitten  by  a  rabid 
dog,  came  immediately  to  Paris  to  be  inoculated  by  M.  Pasteur, 
but  stayed  there  six  days  before  she  summoned  up  courage 
enough  to  knock  at  the  laboratory  door.  When  M.  Pasteur  asked 
her  the  cause  of  this  delay,  she  answered  in  return  :  '  After  I  had 


298  APPENDIX. 


read  all  I  was  made  to  read,  I  had  no  confidence  any  longer.'  At 
the  very  moment  that  the  departure  from  New  York  of  four 
American  children  bitten  by  a  rabid  dog  was  announced,  these 
philanthropic  papers  stated  publicly  that  if  the  sad  ending  of 
little  Louise  Pelletier  had  been  known  in  America,  the  parents 
would  have  spared  the  children  a  long  and  certainly  useless  jour- 
ney. They  came,  and  went  back  cured,  and  hundreds  of  bitten 
people  followed  them." 


PREVENTION   OF   RABIES   AT   RIO   JANEIRO. 

The  Emperor  Dom  Pedro  of  Brazil  forwarded  to  M.  Pasteur,  in 
a  letter  dated  September  26,  1889,  the  statistics  of  the  treatment 
of  rabies  from  February  9,  1888,  to  September  15,  1889,  at  the 
Pasteur  Institute  of  Rio  Janeiro,  which  is  under  the  management 
of  Dr.  Ferreira  de  Santos. 

The  treatment  by  inoculation  was  applied  to  162  persons,  but 
from  this  number  should  be  deducted  : 

First,  five  persons  very  slightly  bitten  by  animals  that  were 
hardly  suspected,  and  who  did  not  complete  the  course  of 
treatment. 

Second,  one  person  that  died  on  the  twenty-third  day  during 
the  course  of  treatment.  The  important  point  in  this  case  is  that 
during  these  twenty-three  days  on  ten  occasions  this  patient  failed 
to  come  to  be  inoculated.  Three  children  who  were  bitten  more 
than  a  year  ago  by  the  same  dog  were  inoculated  and  are  to-day 
in  perfect  health. 

Of  the  remaining  156  persons  only  one  died,  probably  but  not 
certainly  from  rabies.  The  death-rate  is  therefore  0.64  per  cent. 


TREATMENT   OF   RABIES  AT   THE   PASTEUR    INSTITUTE. 

Dr.  P.  Muselier  published  in  the  Gazette  Mtdicale  de  Paris 
a  few  months  ago  a  re'sume'  of  the  proceedings  at  the  Pasteur 
Institute  to  that  time  which  is  interesting. 

The  publication  of  the  results  obtained  in  the  preventive  treat- 
ment of  rabies  at  the  Institut  Pasteur  during  the  period  extending 


APPENDIX.  299 


from  November,  1888,  to  November,  1889,  produces  an  impres- 
sion quite  as  satisfactory  as  the  one  conveyed  by  the  results  ob- 
tained during  the  preceding  years  ;  it  seems  to  add  an  additional 
title  to  those  which  Pasteur's  method  has  already  won  in  the  eyes 
of  the  public.  This  time  again  the  death-rate  following  preven- 
tive inoculations  does  not  go  beyond  a  very  low  fraction — thirteen 
deaths  out  of  a  total  of  1,810  persons  vaccinated,  which  represents 
a  portion  of  .73  per  cent. 

These  figures  call  forth  two  remarks — the  first  bearing  on  the 
number  of  deaths  after  treatment,  and  the  manner  in  which  it  is 
progressively  diminishing.  This  number  is  at  present  less  than 
one  per  cent.,  whereas  the  mortality  in  cases  of  rabies  that  have 
not  been  treated  reaches  the  enormous  proportion  of  fifteen  per 
cent.  ;  the  second  relative  to  this  fact,  that  the  mortality  after 
inoculation  is  about  identical  whether  the  bites  were  inflicted  by 
animals  proved  mad  by  experimentation  or  by  animals  in  which 
rabies  was  simply  suspected. 

It  should  be  noted  in  passing  that  the  latter  remark  authorizes 
us  to  think  that  the  diagnosis  of  probable  rabies  in  animals  that 
inflict  bites  and  then  disappear  without  leaving  any  traces  is,  as  a 
general  thing,  perfectly  justified. 

It  would  seem  from  this  fact  that  Pasteur's  method  has  tri- 
umphed over  all  obstacles,  and  that  its  dazzling  superiority  is 
now  established  beyond  the  reach  of  any  question.  Nevertheless, 
we  feel  it  our  duty  to  admit  the  justness  of  certain  criticisms, 
quite  plausible  in  appearance,  which  have  been  made  latterly,  not 
so  much  against  the  method  itself  as  against  a  too  literal  interpre- 
tation of  the  way  in  which  it  acts. 

In  connection  with  three  cases  of  rabies  that  had  undergone 
treatment  by  M.  Pasteur's  inoculations  M.  Lancereaux  recently 
published  an  article  which  seems  to  justify  the  restrictions  to 
which  we  have  just  alluded.  The  victims,  three  boys,  who  had  been 
bitten  by  the  same  dog,  which  was  proved  to  have  been  mad,  had 
gone  through  the  course  of  preventive  inoculation.  Two  of  them 
felt  no  subsequent  effects,  the  third  died  with  all  the  symptoms  of 
rabies. 

How  can  we  explain  these  different  results  coming  from  an 
identical  treatment  applied  to  cases  which  appear  to  be  likewise 
identical  ?  Are  we  to  attribute  the  fatal  termination  of  the  first 


300  APPENDIX. 


case  to  the  fact  that  the  wound  had  not  been  cauterized  imme- 
diately after  the  accident,  as  had  been  done  in  the  case  of  the 
other  two  boys  ?  or  should  we  impute  it  to  the  depth  of  this 
wound,  a  circumstance  which  may  well  have  facilitated  the  imme- 
diate penetration  of  the  virus  into  one  of  the  nervous  fasciculi  of 
the  region,  and  its  subsequent  rapid  conveyance  toward  the  cere- 
bro-spinal  centre  ?  It  would  be  possible  to  argue  as  to  the  degree 
of  probability  of  either  of  these  hypotheses  ;  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  the  case  itself  is  unfavorable  to  Pasteur's  method.  Still,  the 
treatment  had  been  applied  at  an  early  date,  in  accordance  with 
all  the  rules — that  is  to  say,  under  the  circumstances  calculated  to 
assure  success. 

M.  Lancereaux  calls  attention  to  these  peculiar  difficulties  of 
the  interpretations.  In  his  opinion,  in  estimating  the  value  of 
these  cases  of  failure  we  should  take  into  consideration  a  number 
of  factors,  among  which  the  depth  of  the  wound  and  the  direct 
contamination  of  a  nerve  fibre  by  the  virus  seem  to  hold  the  most 
important  rank.  He  likewise  thinks  that  we  should  also  take 
account  of  the  absence  of  cauterization  after  a  bite.  This  precau- 
tion, which  was  formerly  so  strictly  enforced,  has  fallen  somewhat 
into  discredit  since  Pasteur's  discovery,  but  we  must  admit  that 
facts  such  as  those  that  we  have  mentioned  above  furnish  in 
its  favor  an  argument  of  indisputable  value. 

Lastly,  it  is  just  to  remark  that  reflections  based  on  simple  sta- 
tistics are  not  sufficient  whereby  to  judge  the  value  of  the  treat- 
ment ;  it  is  necessary  to  examine  closely  each  particular  case, 
and  then  will  be  found  causes  for  objections  to  which  a  satisfactory 
reply  has  yet  to  be  found. 


FRESH  AIR   IN   CONSUMPTION. 

Dr.  Nicaise  has  recently  directed  attention  to  the  import- 
ance of  pure  air  in  all  cases  of  tuberculosis. 

A  few  years  ago,  it  was  thought  that  by  increasing  the  cubic 
contents  of  the  enclosed  space  in  which  a  patient  breathes,  the 
desired  result,  an  atmosphere  of  pure  air,  would  be  attained. 
But  this  procedure  is  insufficient.  The  air  is  still  vitiated,  and  the 
solution  of  the  problem  lies  in  a  continual  renewing  of  the  air. 


APPENDIX.  301 


Our  dwellings  are  not  constructed  on  this  principle.  We  are 
therefore  obliged  to  effect  this  permanent  aeration  artificially. 
M.  Nicaise,  in  speaking  of  the  process  of  keeping  a  window 
partly  open,  reports  the  degrees  of  temperature  that  he  noted 
during  his  sojourn  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  where  he 
spent  106  days  during  the  winter  of  1888-9. 

His  room  was  on  the  first  floor,  had  one  window  and  a  south- 
western aspect.  The  sun  entered  it  during  the  greater  part  of 
the  day.  The  window  was  supplied  with  blinds,  and  the  room 
contained  fifty-three  cubic  metres. 

The  comparative  figures  of  the  minimum  temperature  out-of- 
doors  and  in  the  room  were  the  following :  the  mimimum  tempera- 
ture out-of-doors  ranged  between  2  and  9  degrees  centigrade 
above  zero.  The  minimum  temperature  in  the  room  varied  be- 
tween 9^  and  15  degrees.  Under  these  conditions,  then,  there 
is  no  risk  in  leaving  a  window  partly  open  during  the  months  of 
December,  January,  February,  and  March. 

This  conclusion  can  be  extended  to  other  climates,  but  then  it 
would  be  necessary  to  heat  the  room. 

The  renewal  of  the  air  of  a  room  is  accomplished  by  a  current 
of  air  coming  from  the  outside  and  by  the  expansion  of  the 
heated  air.  Under  these  circumstances  the  renewal  is  quite  slow, 
and  a  sudden  lowering  of  temperature  is  not  to  be  feared.  By 
the  means  of  blinds  with  movable  slats  it  is  quite  easy  when  de- 
sired to  regulate  the  amount  of  air  that  enters  and  to  prevent  the 
too  rapid  lowering  of  the  temperature  inside. — Paris  Cor. 


THE  MICROBE  OF  INFLUENZA. 

The  Wiener  Medicinische  Blatter  first  announced  the 
discovery  of  this  microbe  by  M.  Seifert  at  Wurtzberg, 
in  1884.  It  was  described  as  composed  of  micrococci,  one 
or  two  thousandths  of  a  millimetre  in  diameter,  arranged 
like  beads  on  a  necklace,  and  is  found  in  the  mucus  of  the 
trachea,  the  bronchial  tubes,  and  the  nose.  It  is  not  to  be 
found  in  ordinary  colds  in  the  head,  or  of  bronchitis. 

In  January  of  this  year  there  appeared  in  the  Evening 
World  newspaper  an  alleged  illustration  of  the  microbe, 


302  APPENDIX. 


which  was  purely  the  work  of  some  imaginative  newspaper 
man.  Like  many  other  things  that  appear  in  the  newspapers 
nowadays,  it  was  absolutely  false  in  every  respect.  It  did 
not  resemble  the  microbe  of  Seifert  in  any  one  particular. 
If  the  reporter  had  actually  seen  any  thing  like  that  he  rep- 
resented, he  had  been  ludicrously  duped.  It  needs  some- 
thing better  than  a  boy  from  the  public  school,  or  even  fresh 
from  our  colleges,  to  form  a  judgment  on  matters  of  science, 
and  especially  upon  those  of  such  delicacy  as  this.  But  it  is 
a  misfortune  when,  for  the  purpose  of  making  a  sensation, 
newspapers  deliberately  deceive  the  public.  The  treatment 
for  the  disease,  recommended  in  the  same  paper  at  the  time, 
was  equally  absurd. 

M.  Seifert's  discovery  was  afterwards  disputed.  It  was 
questioned  whether  the  microbe  described  by  him  was  actu- 
ally the  cause  of  influenza,  and  Doctors  Maximilian  and 
Adolph  Jolles  of  Vienna  put  in  a  later  claim,  which  is  well 
defined  in  the  following  letter  written  by  them  : 

In  our  own  chemical  microscopic  laboratory  we  claim  to  have 
discovered  the  bacillus  of  influenza.  During  the  epidemic  in 
Vienna  our  attention  was  first  directed  to  some  very  numerous 
capsule  cocci,  greatly  resembling  the  pneumonia  bacilli  of  Dr. 
Friedlander.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  sputum  was  of  itself  also, 
when  microscopically  examined,  in  no  way  remarkable,  showing 
the  general  characteristics  of  pneumonia  bacteria,  and  although 
many  scientific  searches  have  found  in  normal  sputum  similar 
micro-organisms,  which,  however,  differ  entirely  from  the  Fried- 
lander  capsule  cocci  as  they  do  not  color  their  surroundings,  and, 
owing  to  the  enormous  number  in  which  the  cocci  were  found, 
made  the  sputa  really  appear  like  the  pure  culture  of  the  same, 
we  felt  called  upon  early  in  December  to  inform  practitioners  and 
our  scientific  confreres  of  this  surprising  and  unusual  find,  and 
to  point  to  the  possibility  of  pneumonia  being  present  in  these 
cases.  We  continued  our  investigations  carefully,  and  our  sup- 
position that  it  was  a  newly  discovered  microbe  organism  which 
stood  in  connection  with  influenza  grew  stronger  and  stronger. 

We  then  proceeded  to  the  cultivation  of  the  cocci  upon  gelatine 
plate  cultures  on  slides,  and  as  soon  even  as  the  fourth  day  we 


APPENDIX.  303 


discovered  colonies  which  resembled  strongly  Friedlander's  cocci. 
Deep  down  in  the  gelatine  they  look  like  round,  sharply  denned, 
yellowish,  minutely  granulated  organisms.  When  seen  on  the 
surface  of  the  gelatine  they  present  the  appearance  of  infinitesi- 
mally  small  porcelain  buttons.  Now  for  comparison  with  the 
Friedlander  cocci,  which  they  resemble  generally,  but  not  when 
prepared  as  tube  cultures,  they  showed  the  characteristic  nail 
shape  ;  but  placed  alongside  the  Friedlander  cocci  the  influenza 
bacilli  appeared  less  brilliant,  more  bent  and  crooked.  Subjected 
to  the  aniline  color  test,  the  influenza  bacilli  go  through  it  very 
much  like  the  Friedlander  bacilli.  By  means  of  watery  aniline 
colors  we  produced  a  fine  preparation  of  slides. 

Before  concluding  our  statement  it  may  be  of  interest  to  add, 
that  in  the  investigation  of  the  Vienna  water  supply,  which  we 
made  December  26th,  we  discovered,  in  addition  to  numerous 
saprophyten  bacteria,  some  which  the  gelatine  magnified,  some 
which  resisted  the  magnifying  process,  and  also  numerous  colo- 
nies (in  German,  nagel  colonien),  which,  under  the  microscope, 
proved  to  be  diplococci. 

In   regard   to   the   inoculation   of  animals  by  the  process  of 
attenuating  the  virus,  our  experiments  are  not  yet  concluded. 
(Signed)         Dr.  MAXIMILIAN  JOLLES. 
Dr.  ADOLPH  JOLLES. 

In  an  interview  held  about  the  time  of  the  publication  of 
this  letter  Dr.  Jolles  explained  the  history  of  the  discovery, 
and  it  is  well  always  to  have  such  records  as  a  guide  to  other 
investigators.  He  said : 

We  came  upon  a  trace  of  the  bacilli  quite  accidentally,  about 
the  middle  of  December,  in  a  sample  of  urine  sent  us  by  a  prac- 
titioner, who  thought  that  his  patient  was  suffering  from  kidney 
disease.  Examining  the  urine  microscopically  we  discovered  a 
bacillus,  which,  owing  to  the  peculiar  cassock  formation  of  the 
head,  we  called  "  the  bishop  bacillus."  It  was  a  bacillus  we  had 
never  seen  before,  nor  had  it  ever  been  signalled  by  any 
bacteriologist. 

We  immediately  set  to  work  with  a  whole  staff  upon  an  exami- 
nation of  the  defecation  and  urine  of  influenza  patients  in  the 


304  APPENDIX. 


general  hospital  and  in  private  practice,  and  in  every  case  the 
bishop  bacilli  were  found  in  great  numbers,  while  in  excretions 
from  various  other  maladies  examined  at  the  same  time  the 
bacilli  could  not  be  found.  This  we  did  to  avoid  the  argument 
brought  against  the  Mexican,  Dr.  Cordova,  to  the  effect  that  the 
peronospera  lutea  is  found  in  the  blood  of  all  who  die  in  certain 
seasons  at  Vera  Cruz,  whether  yellow  fever  be  prevalent  or  not. 

They  resemble  in  no  way  the  cholera  microbe,  but  have  many 
points  of  resemblance  with  the  bacilli  of  pneumonia  discovered 
by  Dr.  Friedlander. 

I  wish  to  accentuate  the  absolute  difference  in  form  and 
nature  between  the  two  animalculae,  because  it  is  still  popularly 
believed  that  influenza  is  a  fprerunner  of  cholera,  which  belief,  I 
think,  we  have  scientifically  disposed  of.  Now,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  influenza  bacilli  and  the  pneumonia  bacilli  are 
undoubtedly  of  the  same  family  and  analogous. 

I  have  as  yet  decided  nothing  about  inoculation,  but  I  hope 
that  that  process  may  not  be  postponed  to  the  Greek  Kalends.  We 
have  tried  the  bacilli  and  attenuated  substantially  the  virus,  but 
our  first  case  of  inoculation  killed  the  patient — a  rabbit — on  which 
we  tried  it  a  week  ago.  It  died  immediately  of  blood-poisoning. 

I  cannot  speak  about  the  experiments  upon  which  we  are  now 
engaged  except  to  say  that  they  promise  well. 

Another  curious  discovery  was  made  on  December  28th,  when 
the  epidemic  was  at  its  height.  I  then  examined  some  of  the 
water  that  comes  to  the  city  from  the  Kaiser  Well,  a  hundred 
kilometres  away  in  the  Styrian  Mountains,  and  I  found  two 
hundred  and  twenty-eight  bacilli  in  every  cubic  centimetre  of 
water. 

When  la  grippe  first  made  its  appearance  in  Europe  the 
doctors  were  perplexed.  There  was  more  excuse  for  them 
than  there  was  for  the  consternation  of  the  physicians  of 
America,  because  the  disease  spread  westward,  and  Ameri- 
cans had  the  experience  of  Europe  to  guide  them.  In 
December,  1889,  the  epidemic  was  fully  prevalent  in  Paris, 
and  various  theories  were  formulated  about  it.  Some  readily 
regarded  it  as  a  precursor  of  cholera.  And  here  is  an  ex- 
ample of  the  value  of  a  knowledge  of  microbes,  since  the 


APPENDIX.  305 

bacillus  of  cholera  and  that  of  influenza  are  so  different  that 
any  idea  of  a  connection  between  the  two  diseases  may  at 
once  be  set  aside.  A  resident  in  Paris  at  the  time  thus 
described  the  general  nature  of  the  attack : 

The  influenza  epidemic  is  in  full  swing.  It  has  captured 
the  Military  School  of  Saint-Cyr.  It  has  attacked  the  corps 
de  ballet  at  the  Opera.  It  has  made  a  clean  sweep  through 
great  shops  like  the  "  Louvre "  and  the  "  Bon  MarcheV' 
In  fact,  nothing  since  the  Eiffel  tower  has  absorbed  such 
public  attention  as  this  aggravating  and  mysterious  malady 
that  has  swooped  down  upon  us  from  Russia  and  to-day 
holds  not  less  than  one  hundred  thousand  Parisians  in  its 
clutches. 

Dr.  Albert  Robin,  of  the  Acade'mie  de  M£decine,  described 
the  symptoms  as  headache,  pains  in  the  eyes,  soreness  over 
the  body,  loss  of  appetite,  high  fever,  and  a  general  sense  of 
lassitude  and  discomfort.  These  general  symptoms  may  be 
got  rid  of,  but  they  are  apt  to  be  followed  by  bronchial 
attacks,  coryza,  sore  throat,  diarrhoea,  pleurisy,  or  pneumo- 
nia, and  it  is  in  these  that  the  actual  danger  rests.  The 
time  of  the  disease  was  from  two  to  eight  days,  but  the 
sequelae  might  cause  it  to  drag  on  for  many  weeks. 

Dr.  J.  A.  Villemin,  also  of  the  Academy,  was  disposed  to 
regard  la  grippe  as  identical  with  dengue  fever  common  in 
Syria  and  the  East  and  also  well  understood  in  some  of  the 
Southern  States  and  the  West  Indies,  a  fact  which  Dr. 
Villemin  did  not  seem  to  be  aware  of,  though  he  recognized 
that  it  was  due  to  a  microbe,  and  also  that  that  microbe 
came  through  the  atmosphere  and  not,  as  in  cholera  and 
some  forms  of  fever  and  dysentery,  through  the'  water. 

Dr.  Coroil  is  a  specialist  on  tuberculosis,  and  he  regarded 
la  grippe  as  of  very  little  importance.  But  he,  too,  never 
questioned  that  it  was  caused  by  a  microbe,  although  neither 
he  nor  Dr.  Villemin  was  willing  to  give  credit  to  Seifert's 
and  Jolles'  discoveries.  Dr.  Coroil,  in  fact,  distinctly  denies 
that  the  special  microbe  of  influenza  and  la  grippe  has  been 
identified.  He  explains  his  skepticism  thus : 


20 


306  APPENDIX. 


"  The  saliva  of  a  healthy  person  contains  ten  or  twenty 
different  kinds  of  microbes,  which  are  not  only  harmless, 
but  which  are  absolutely  necessary  to  the  digestion.  As 
soon,  however,  as  a  person  becomes  affected  with  any  dis- 
ease of  a  contagious  nature  the  number  of  microbes  in  the 
various  bodily  secretions  become  considerably  increased, 
and  what  makes  the  task  difficult  is  that  "  good  microbes  " 
and  "bad  microbes"  become  hopelessly  mixed  up,  and  it 
takes  us  years  of  patient  experimenting  to  separate  and 
classify  them." 

Nevertheless  it  is  likely  that  if  Doctors  Jolles  and  Seifert 
had  been  Frenchmen  Dr.  Coroil  and  his  colleagues  in  the 
Academic  would  readily  have  acknowledged  the  value  of 
their  investigations. 

LA   GRIPPE   IN  AMERICA. 

Nobody  with  a  sense  of  humor  could  have  failed  to  see 
the  funny  side  of  la  grippe's  visit  to  this  country.  The 
people  had  heard  a  little  about  it,  and  the  doctors  ought  to 
have  heard  every  thing.  But  the  consternation  that  it  caused 
on  all  sides  was  inexplicable  except  on  the  ground  of  igno- 
rance. The  newspapers  exaggerated  it  and  alarmed  the 
people,  at  the  same  time  that  they  offered  methods  of  treat- 
ment which  they  said  anybody  might  use,  but  which  were 
worthless  and  often  dangerous.  Druggists  broke  the  laws  by 
prescribing,  and  they  helped,  in  no  small  degree,  by  their 
blunders,  to  spread  the  disease  as  well  as  to  increase  the 
public  alarm.  Many  people  thus  were  induced  to  think  they 
had  it,  while  their  worst  trouble  was  simply  cold,  and  many 
others  who  had  it  were  led  to  neglect  it  until  worse  conse- 
quences had  to  be  experienced.  Between  druggists  and 
newspapers,  the  visitation  was  intensified  at  least  a  hundred- 
fold. 

The  medical  profession,  too,  as  a  body,  seemed  to  lose  its 
head.  It  was  confused  and  bewildered,  and  did  not  know 
what  to  do.  A  few  foreign  physicians,  who,  happily,  are 


APPENDIX.  307 


among  us,  retained  themselves,  and  smiling  at  the  fuss  that 
they  saw  around  them,  they  treated  their  patients  on  sound 
principles  and  were  successful.  But  to  most  of  our  local 
diploma-holders  the  visitor  was  a  very  troublesome  and  in- 
comprehensible stranger. 

To  illustrate  this  I  shall  not  depend  upon  my  own  observa- 
tions, or  upon  the  knowledge  that  came  to  me  at  the  time, 
but  will  quote  largely  from  some  contributions  to  The  World, 
whose  management  cannot  be  charged  with  partiality  toward 
foreign  citizens.  It  must  be  stated,  as  a  caution  to  the 
reader,  that  physicians  in  New  York  are  accustomed  to  such 
interviews  with  reporters  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  an 
advertisement.  Sometimes,  like  other  people,  they  pay  the 
reporters,  or  even  take  their  contribution  to  the  office  for  the 
sake  of  getting  such  an  interview.  But  this  does  not  affect 
the  value  of  their  statements  in  regard  to  treatment. 

A  professor  at  one  of  the  medical  schools,  being  asked  how 
he  treated  la  grippe,  said  : 

"  Thus  far  I  have  simply  administered  antipyrine  for  the 
first  few  days,  combined  with  digitalis ;  after  the  bronchial 
affection  has  become  prominent,  a  cough  mixture  containing 
minute  doses  of  apomorphia  and  jaborandi,  together  with 
the  inhalation  at  night  of  tincture  of  benzine  in  hot  water. 
That  is  about  the  amount  of  my  treatment  thus  far.  I  have 
not  given  a  dose  of  quinine,  and  do  not  expect  to  give  any. 
It  is  of  no  service  whatever  except  when  the  patient  has 
malaria  complicated  with  the  disease." 

A  physician  in  East  Twenty-ninth  Street  said  to  an  inter- 
viewer : 

"  The  onset  of  the  disease  is  sudden.  It  is  preceded 
by  malaise,  then  usually  a  decided  chill,  which  is  followed  by 
fever.  Great  prostration  is  felt,  compelling  the  sufferer  to 
take  to  bed.  The  weakness  which  it  produces  over  the 
whole  system  is  distressing.  There  are  also  severe  pains  in 
the  limbs,  across  the  lower  part  of  the  back,  over  the  chest 
and  heart,  in  the  head,  around  the  eyeballs,  and  under  the 
bridge  of  the  nose.  The  digestive  organs  are  affected,  loss 


308  APPENDIX. 


of  appetite  ensues,  accompanied  with  great  thirst,  a  coated 
tongue,  sometimes  cofic  pains,  with  nausea,  diarrhoea,  and 
vomiting.  Sneezing  and  severe  catarrhal  symptoms  generally 
develop,  but  often  not  until  the  second  or  third  day,  and 
there  is  frequently  a  feeling  of  suffocation,  with  marked  dif- 
ficulty of  breathing.  No  two  persons  are  affected  alike,  and 
the  treatment  would  have  to  be  suited  to  the  physical  condi- 
tion of  the  patient.  It  is  not  always  necessary  to  administer 
medicine,  nor  would  the  same  kind  of  medicine  be  applicable 
in  all  cases." 

A  doctor  in  Forty-fifth  Street  was  serious  in  his  opinion 
that  the  outbreak  was  an  epidemic.  The  first  symptoms, 
according  to  that  gentleman,  resembled  the  onset  of  typhoid. 

"  It  begins,"  he  said,  "  with  a  chill,  and  in  some  cases  is 
accompanied  by  extreme  weakness.  In  the  cases  of  two 
ladies  I  attended,  this  weakness  developed  so  rapidly  that 
fainting  fits  ensued.  A  fever  usually  succeeds,  and  the  tem- 
perature rises  to  as  high  as  102  degrees.  There  are  also 
severe  headaches,  pains  in  the  eyes,  back,  and  limbs,  and  gen- 
erally all  over  the  muscular  system,  accompanied  by  cold 
chills  running  up  and  down  the  back.  I  believe  it  is  a  self- 
limited  disease,  and  the  patient  who  is  careful  during  the 
febrile  stage  will  recover  in  an  average  of  three  days  under 
proper  treatment. 

"  The  treatment  must  vary.  Quinine  is  useless.  I  know 
of  one  case  of  pneumonia  certainly  due  to  exposure  while 
suffering  from  an  attack  of  this  disease,  and  until  the  real 
nature  of  the  malady  has  been  discovered,  people  should  take 
no  chances  or  run  any  risks  by  neglecting  it." 

"  You  think,  then,  that  there  is  some  doubt  as  to  what  the 
disease  really  is  ?  " 

"  I  do.  When  the  first  case  came  under  my  notice  I  did 
not  thoroughly  comprehend  what  it  could  be.  If  the  symp- 
toms were  those  of  ordinary  influenza,  I  could  not  have  mis- 
taken them,  but  there  are  many  strange  features  in  the 
present  trouble  which  raise  a  doubt  in  any  mind  as  to  what 
it  can  really  be.  It  is  not  certain  by  any  means  that  this  is 


APPENDIX,  309 


the  same  disease  which  has  visited  Europe,  and  which  has 
become  known  as  the  grip.  The  other  day  I  came  in  contact 
with  a  man  who  claimed  to  have  had  the  grip  a  number  of 
times  in  Northern  Germany,  and  whose  son  was  afflicted 
with  the  disease  which  has  visited  us,  and  he  told  me  that 
the  latter  is  entirely  different  in  its  symptoms  from  the 
disease  with  which  he  has  so  frequently  been  afflicted. 

"  Under  la  grippe  he  never  suffered  from  any  fever  and 
had  no  chills,  only  a  severe  coryza,  or  cold  in  the  head,  with 
more  or  less  muscular  pains  and  a  stiff  neck.  This  latter 
symptom — a  stiff  neck — is  something  I  have  not  seen  as  yet 
in  any  of  my  patients." 

"  Do  you  expect  that  the  disease  will  become  as  wide- 
spread as  it  has  been  reported  to  have  been  in  Europe  ? ' 

"  If  it  is  the  same  disease  I  believe  the  same  results  will 
follow,  but  whether  it  is  or  not  I  am  of  the  belief  that  the 
people  are  likely  to  become  better  acquainted  with  it  during 
the  next  few  days,  and  I  would  advise  every  man  to  take  to 
his  bed  at  once  and  protect  himself  from  exposure  as  the 
surest  means  of  preventing  subsequent  troubles  from  develop- 
ing." 

A  Thirty-eighth  Street  physician,  in  answer  to  a  questioner, 
said  :  "  The  extent  of  the  illness,  in  most  cases,  is  dependent 
upon  the  physical  condition  of  the  patient.  As  far  as  I  have 
been  able  to  observe,  the  general  symptoms  of  the  disease 
seem  to  be  similar  to  those  that  characterize  the  European 
epidemic,  only  it  seems  to  be  less  virulent  in  its  nature  with 
us  than  it  has  been  abroad. 

"  There  are  some  people,  of  course,  who  are  afflicted  more 
severely  than  others,  but  that  is  the  case  in  all  diseases.  I 
should  consider  that  an  attack  of  this  influenza  on  a  person 
suffering  from  other  diseases  might  be  quite  serious.  This 
epidemic  has  characteristics  of  its  own.  The  cases  which  I 
have  seen  are  not,  by  any  manner  of  means,  like  the  ordinary 
run  of  spring  and  fall  influenza.  At  present  I  am  not  pre- 
pared to  state  positively  what  the  disease  may  be,  as  that 
will  have  to  be  scientifically  determined  later. 


310  APPENDIX. 


"  As  to  the  treatment  to  be  administered,  I  do  not  think 
that  any  one  method  would  be  applicable  in  all  cases.  I 
have  just  simply  treated  patients  according  to  their  peculiar 
requirements ;  and  what  I  might  prescribe  in  one  instance  I 
would  vary  in  another." 

A  physician,  whose  name  is  well  known  through  his  writ- 
ings and  what  the  profession  calls  legitimate  advertising,  said 
that  it  was  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  epidemic  was 
the  same  as  that  in  Europe.  Others  declared  that  it  was 
identical.  Many  insisted  that  quinine  was  useless ;  others 
that  nothing  but  quinine  would  avail.  Here  is  the  prescrip- 
tion of  a  Brooklyn  physician  : 

9     Quinia?  sulph.  gr.  xxiv. 

Antipyrin      ....         gr.  xxiv. 
Ext.  belladonnse    .         .         .         gr.  -^ 
Pulv.  opii      ....         gr.  iij. 
Divide  into  twelve  parts,  and  take  one  every  three  hours. 

One  man  would  tell  us  that  belladonna  was  bad,  and  an- 
other that  opium  and  morphia  were  dangerous.  A  physician 
in  Washington  described  his  treatment  as  "  rational."  "  I 
would  give,"  he  said,  "  belladonna  to  control  the  mucous 
discharge,  aconite  for  the  fever,  and  quinine  and  salol  rather 
than  antipyrine." 

A  homoeopath  has  the  following  remarkable  story  to  tell, 
and  if  others  of  his  sect  acted  similarly,  little  wonder  that 
the  homoeopaths  were  unsuccessful,  except  in  lending  en- 
couragement to  undertakers. 

"  I  give,"  said  this  learned  person,  "  arsenicum  where  the 
leading  indications  are  great  prostration,  thirst,  anxious  rest- 
lessness, burning  of  nostrils,  and  running  of  thin,  watery  dis- 
charge from  nose  and  eyes.  Mercurius  is  indicated  where 
the  prominent  symptoms  are  sore  throat,  fever,  with  sweat- 
ing, sneezing,  and  a  somewhat  thicker  discharge  from  nose. 
I  give  bryonia  where  vertigo  is  prominent  and  patient  is 
unable  to  raise  head  except  with  great  effort,  and  experiences 
aching  of  limbs,  etc.  Gelsemium  is  the  proper  remedy  when 
marked  symptoms  are  prostration,  aching  in  limbs,  and  feel- 
ing of  heaviness  and  stupor." 


APPENDIX.  311 


A  St.  Louis  doctor  said :  "  The  influenza,  or  la  grippe  as 
it  is  now  fashionably  called,  is  a  vegetable  parasite,  and  there 
is  no  serious  danger  attached  to  an  attack  of  it,  provided  the 
attack  is  not  on  a  very  young  child  or  a  very  weak  old  per- 
son. Its  treatment  would  be  a  matter  to  consider  after  the 
case  has  come  under  professional  notice.  Like  bronchitis, 
which  is  not  in  itself  dangerous,  la  grippe  might,  through 
neglect,  become  a  dangerous  malady,  and  finally  develop  a 
case  of  pneumonia." 

Another  in  that  town  believed  there  was  no  such  thing  as 
la  grippe,  and  that  it  was  only  an  exaggerated  cold  ;  while  a 
physician  in  Chicago,  who  had  had  experience  in  Eastern 
Europe,  had  no  doubt  about  its  being  the  genuine  Russian 
disease.  I  quote  the  interview  with  the  gentleman  in  full. 

"  All  of  the  cases  I  have  had,"  he  remarked,  "  have  shown  the 
unmistakable  symptoms  of  Russian  influenza,  and  some  of  them 
have  developed  into  very  bad  cases.  The  first  case  coming 
under  my  observation  was  last  Monday  at  a  restaurant.  An 
acquaintance  came  in  and  sat  down  to  the  table  with  me.  His 
tonsils  were  swollen,  and  the  air  passages  of  his  head  clogged 
with  mucus. 

"  After  examining  him,  I  unhesitatingly  declared  that  he  was 
afflicted  with  influenza. 

"  There  is  not  as  much  sneezing  accompanying  the  disease  as 
is  popularly  supposed.  The  first  symptoms  are  a  feeling  of  lassi- 
tude and  weakness,  a  tightening  of  the  air  passages  of  the  head 
and  throat,  and,  well,  a  person  appears  about  to  be  stricken  with 
pneumonia,  and  if  the  disease  is  not  arrested,  pneumonia  will 
result." 

"  Do  you  think  the  disease  will  be  as  severe  here  as  in  Europe  ? " 

"  It  will  be  over  the  city  in  a  week  or  two,  and  it  will  be  the 
genuine  Russian  influenza.  There  is  no  mistake  about  that.  I 
was  in  Russia  in  1875  and  1881,  when  the  disease  was  so  preva- 
lent, and  I  know  from  the  experience  I  gained  there  that  there  is 
no  use  endeavoring  to  check  it,  for  it  can't  be  stopped.  In  my 
opinion  the  disease  will  be  severe,  and  there  may  be  some  deaths. 
I  have  been  in  London,  where  the  disease  is  now  prevalent,  and 
I  cannot  see  much  difference  between  the  climate  of  that  city  and 


312  APPENDIX. 


that  of  Chicago,  with  the  exception  of  the  heavy  fogs  they  have 
there." 

"  What  about  the  germs  of  the  disease  ? " 

"  They  are  carried  in  the  air.  The  first  case  I  spoke  of  showed 
the  presence  of  the  bacteria  in  large  numbers.  While  examining 
the  patient,  some  of  the  mucus  dropped  on  my  coat,  and  I  had 
a  touch  of  the  disease  myself,  although  I  arrested  it  in  time.  I 
also  examined  some  of  the  bacteria  under  the  microscope.  They 
are  the  most  active  of  living  things  I  ever  saw,  and  are  constantly 
moving.  You  can  imagine  what  a  havoc  a  lot  of  those  bacteria 
make  when  they  get  into  one's  system." 

"How  ought  the  disease  to  be  treated?" 

"  The  patient  must  be  watched  carefully  and  given  proper 
remedies.  The  disease  must  run  its  course,  however.  The  only 
thing  that  can  be  done  when  it  has  become  constitutional  is  to 
lessen  its  effect  on  the  system,  and  the  patient  must  be  given 
remedies  that  will  minimize  the  suffering." 

In  Philadelphia  the  physicians  had  recourse  to  quinine 
and  whiskey,  and  external  applications  of  brandy.  One 
authority  there  said  it  was  only  a  common  cold  ;  another, 
who  is  esteemed  a  specialist  on  fevers,  held,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  la  grippe  is  deadly  in  its  results,  unless  given 
prompt  treatment,  because  the  varying  temperature  of  the 
blood  is  productive  of  inflammation  of  the  lungs  and  bron- 
chitis through  the  inhalation  of  cold  air  into  the  warm  body. 
Philadelphia  is  also  the  home  of  the  doctor  who  traced 
the  introduction  of  the  epidemic  into  this  country  to  the 
exposure  of  a  corpse  which  had  been  brought  from  Paris 
while  the  disease  was  raging  there  ! 

The  Boston  people  were  terribly  frightened.  Quackery 
runs  rampant  there,  and  there  were  several  deaths.  One  man, 
who  boasts  a  large  number  of  patients  but  denies  any 
medical  association,  said  it  was  nothing  more  than  rheuma- 
tism plus  a  cold  in  the  head.  A  doctor  there  identified  it 
with  dengue  fever,  yet  another  thought  no  two  cases  were 
alike.  The  Christian  Science  people  recommended  prayer 
as  the  only  possible  cure.  Nothing  but  prayer  to  kill 
microbes  !  Another  medical  sect  of  Boston  believed  in  rum 


APPENDIX.  3  1 3 


and  did  not  care  for  prayer.  Rum  was  to  be  used  internally 
and  externally,  chiefly  internally,  and  rum  was  to  be  put  into 
a  bowl  and  set  fire  to,  and  then  the  patient's  feet  were  to  be 
plunged  into  it  and  held  there. 

Dr.  Yee  Joe,  a  celebrated  Chinese  doctor,  scorned  the  idea 
of  his  people  being  affected  with  la  grippe  because  "the 
Chinese  wear  their  clothing  loose,  thereby  preventing  the 
moisture  due  to  overheating  from  rendering  the  body  liable 
to  cold."  Dr.  Yee  Joe  added  that  he  treats  a  cold  by  the 
sweating  process,  using  water  steaming  hot,  with  ginger  and 
pepperment  added. 

The  prescription  of  the  New  York  Board  of  Health,  as 
given  by  a  physician  connected  with  it,  was  : 

"  Pure  vaseline  to  bathe  the  nostrils  and  to  be  drawn  up  like 
snuff.  Small  pills  composed  of  quinine,  camphor,  and  bella- 
donna, taken  internally  four  or  five  times  a  day  "  ;  but  several 
officials  in  that  department,  who  were  taken  with  the  epidemic, 
gave  the  assurance  that  nothing  was  better  than  good  gin, 
and  plenty  of  it. 

LEPROSY. 

A  long  discussion  took  place  at  a  recent  meeting  of  the 
New  York  Academy  of  Medicine  where  attention  was  es- 
pecially given  to  the  danger  likely  to  arise  in  this  country  from 
the  spread  of  leprosy.  Dr.  Morrow  who  has  studied  the 
disease  closely  said  that  in  his  opinion  the  danger  was  not 
such  as  seriously  menaced  the  public  health,  as  the  disease 
would  spread  very  slowly,  if  at  all.  At  the  same  time  it 
should  be  borne  in  mind  that  leprosy  is  a  disease  in  which 
the  resources  of  medical  science  prove  altogether  futile,  and 
measures  should  therefore  be  taken  to  stamp  it  out.  It  is 
probable  that  there  are  more  cases  in  this  country  now  than 
ever  before.  The  report  of  42  cases  in  New  Orleans  last  year 
was  a  surprise  to  every  one,  and  the  propriety  of  legislative 
enactment  for  the  suppression  of  the  disease  is  unquestionable. 

Dr.  C.  W.  Allen  said  that  his  convictions  on  this  question 
were  very  decided.  Two  years  ago,  in  a  paper  read  before 


314  APPENDIX. 


the  Medical  Society  of  the  County  of  New  York,  he  had  con- 
tended that  lepers  should  not  be  admitted  into  this  country, 
and  that  those  already  here  should  be  segregated.  There 
were  at  the  present  time,  as  has  been  stated  by  Dr.  Morrow, 
many  more  lepers  in  the  United  States  than  ever  before. 
Two  years  ago  he  had  placed  the  number  at  250.  This 
number,  he  had  reason  to  believe,  was  too  small  at  that  time, 
and  he  thought  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  there  had  been 
a  considerable  increase  since  then.  When  we  considered  the 
large  number  of  cases  all  about  us,  and  the  increased  likeli- 
hood of  the  spread  of  the  disease  from  the  increasing  facilities 
of  modern  travel,  etc.,  this  question  became  one  that  we 
would  no  longer  shut  our  eyes  to.  It  was  true  that  thus  far 
very  few  cases  had  developed  here  (almost  all  being  imported 
from  other  countries),  yet  some  instances  had  been  reported 
by  Dr.  Bulkley  and  others.  Of  the  42  cases  reported  in  New 
Orleans,  where  no  leprosy  was  supposed  to  exist,  29  were 
natives  of  Louisiana,  and  22  of  the  city  of  New  Orleans. 
One  of  these  had  been  a  nurse  in  a  hospital  where  a  leper 
was  under  treatment  for  some  time.  The  evidences  of  the 
contagiousness  of  the  disease  were  positive,  and  as  long  as  a 
single  leper  existed  anywhere  he  would  constitute  a  source 
of  danger  to  those  about  him. 

Dr.  L.  Duncan  Bulkley  said  he  regarded  this  as  one  of  the 
most  important  questions  ever  brought  before  the  Academy. 
He  thought  no  one  could  fail  to  see  that  whenever  leprosy 
has  been  allowed  free  scope  it  has  spread ;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  whenever  proper  measures  have  been  taken  in 
time  against  its  spread  it  has  been  exterminated.  About 
twenty  years  ago  he  saw  in  the  New  York  Hospital  a  very  bad 
case  of  leprosy.  Since  then  he  had  seen  two  or  three  cases 
every  year  in  New  York.  He  had  met  with  one  case  in  a 
patient  who  had  never  been  many  miles  from  Poughkeepsie, 
where  he  lived,  and  another  in  one  who  had  never  been  far. 
away  from  New  York.  Leprosy  always  comes  from  leprosy. 
He  differed  from  Dr.  Morrow,  however,  in  the  opinion  that 
the  bacillus  leprae  does  not  exist  in  soil,  water,  etc.,  and  be- 
lieved that  it  may  be  left  there,  like  other  disease  germs. 


APPENDIX.  3 1 5 

Dr.  H.  G.  Piffard  said  that  ten  years  ago  he  had  read  a 
paper  before  the  Academy  in  which  he  discussed  the 
question  raised  to-night.  The  points  for  which  he  contended 
at  that  time  were,  first,  the  contagiousness  of  the  disease  ; 
second,  the  segregation  of  lepers  ;  third,  that  it  was  the  func- 
tion of  the  National  Government  to  attend  to  the  matter. 
Since  then  his  views  had  not  altered.  At  that  meeting  a 
committee  was  appointed  from  the  Academy  to  investigate 
the  subject  of  leprosy  in  this  country,  and  the  committee  so 
appointed  performed  the  work  required  of  it  so  far  as  it  was 
possible  for  it  to  do  so.  It  did  not  succeed,  however,  in 
tracing  out  more  than  forty  or  fifty  cases  in  the  United 
States.  Many  cases  unquestionably  escaped  observation, 
and  there  was  no  doubt  in  his  mind  that  at  the  present  time 
there  are  at  least  five  times  as  many  lepers  in  the  country  as 
there  were  then.  That  segregation  was  necessary  was  shown 
by  the  fact  that  wherever  this  has  not  been  practised  the 
disease  has  increased,  not  in  arithmetical,  but  geometrical 
progression.  To  the  question,  Whose  charge  is  it  to  attend 
to  this  segregation?  he  would  answer,  The  National  Gov- 
ernment. The  Government  should,  in  the  first  place,  pre- 
vent the  entrance  of  all  lepers  into  the  country;  and, 
secondly,  induce,  as  far  as  possible,  all  lepers  now  here  to 
go  to  properly  appointed  lazarettos.  It  should  be  the  duty 
of  each  State  to  place  its  own  lepers  in  these  lazarettos. 

Dr.  Morrow,  in  closing  the  discussion,  said  it  was  an 
important  fact,  he  thought,  that  the  spread  of  leprosy  in  the 
Sandwich  Islands  had  occurred  under  conditions  of  high 
civilization,  the  state  of  the  population  being  greatly 
superior  to  what  it  was  fifty  years  before.  The  people 
there  are  in  reality  infinitely  better  off  than  the  great 
majority  of  the  poorer  classes  in  this  country.  For  one 
thing,  they  are  very  cleanly  in  their  habits  and  are  accus- 
tomed to  bathe  four  or  five  times  a  day.  Yet,  notwith- 
standing their  improved  condition,  the  scourge  of  leprosy 
had  attained  the  most  fearful  proportions  among  them. 

In  regard  to  the  contagiousness  of  leprosy,  to  his  mind, 
the  evidences  of  contagiousness  abounded  and  super- 


316  APPENDIX. 


abounded.  He  did  not  wish  to  be  considered  an  alarmist, 
but  in  regard  to  this  disease  he  believed  that  a  wholesome 
dread  was  better  than  a  false  security. 

At  the  conclusion  of  his  remarks  Dr.  Morrow  exhibited, 
under  the  microscope,  specimens  of  the  bacillus  leprae  which 
had  retained  their  vitality  for  a  very  long  period. 

In  the  New  York  Sun  of  August  18,  1889,  some  interesting 
particulars  were  given  arising  out  of  the  death  of  Father 
Damien,  from  which  the  following  extracts  are  taken  : 

The  death  of  Father  Damien,  the  heroic  priest  who  went 
among  the  Hawaiian  lepers  at  Molokai,  and  as  a  leper  himself 
perished,  again  illustrates  the  fact  that  the  true  and  historic  value 
of  a  hero's  life  is  apt  to  be  quite  concealed  from  the  hero  and  to 
be  very  different  from  what  the  hero  imagines  it  to  be.  Damien 
found  the  lepers  cast  upon  a  grim  strip  of  rock  which  shot  out 
into  the  blue  ocean  from  a  prison  wall  of  cliffs  three  thousand 
feet  high. 

The  lepers  had  no  decent  food,  no  decent  water,  only  miserable 
huts  for  shelter,  were  abandoned  to  death  and  suffering  in  its 
most  awful  form.  Damien  pleaded  and  thundered  away  at  the 
Hawaiian  government  until  ships  began  to  touch  at  the  leper 
colony  with  clothes  and  good,  clean  food  in  abundance  and 
supervising  officials  who  had  hearts  in  them.  He  made  explora- 
tions along  the  coast  and  up  among  the  jagged  hillsides  till 
he  found  springs  from  which  flowed  pure  water  :  and  this  he 
brought  down  to  the  lepers  in  pipes  which  he  made  the  govern- 
ment lay.  He  caused  good  houses  to  be  built  for  the  sufferers, 
and  founded  schools  and  hospitals.  When  he  died  he  left  the 
once  bleak  home  of  the  lepers  almost  a  garden,  a  fair  and  really 
beautiful  spot,  in  which  men  were  industrious  and  to  a  certain 
degree  happy,  tilling  their  little  plots  of  ground,  living  in  neat 
cottages,  and  sending  their  children  to  school. 

When  Damien  died  the  story  of  his  life  thrilled  the  world,  it  is 
true  ;  but  it  also  drew  the  attention  of  men  of  science,  of  physi- 
cians, of  princes,  and  newspapers  and  churches  to  the  terrible 
disease  by  which  and  for  which  Damien  died.  In  England  the 
excitement  over  Damien  and  interest  in  the  disease  amounted  to 
a  furor.  Thousands  of  pounds  sterling  were  subscribed  for  the 


APPENDIX.  317 


lepers,  and  grave  commissions  of  medical  men  set  out  to  investi- 
gate the  dread  disease  anew.  Old  reports  on  the  subject,  tales  of 
travellers  and  sea  captains,  were  examined  anew.  The  Prince  of 
Wales  caused  a  panic  by  declaring  that  he  knew  positively  of  a 
leper  who  was  employed  in  one  of  the  great  London  abattoirs. 
In  this  country  by  far  the  most  valuable  and  interesting  contribu- 
tion to  the  literature  of  the  subject  was  an  address  by  Dr.  Prince 
A.  Morrow  before  the  Academy  of  Medicine  in  this  city.  In  his 
address,  Dr.  Morrow  set  forth  the  startling  fact  that  leprosy,  so 
far  from  being  an  extinct  and  purely  historical  disease,  was, 
in  fact,  gaining  ground,  and  prevailed  to  an  alarming  extent 
in  the  United  States. 

Few  have  heard  of  the  afflicted  country  of  Tracadie,  which  lies 
between  the  Baie  de  Chaleurs  and  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  on 
the  River  Tracadie,  on  the  south  shore  of  the  Gulf  of  St.  Law- 
rence. About  one  hundred  and  thirty  years  ago,  as  tradition  has 
it,  a  ship  from  the  Levant,  was  wrecked  on  the  coast. .  Some  of 
the  sailors  were  rescued  and  received  hospitality  from  the  settlers, 
the  Acadians  from  France.  Some  women  were  the  first  to 
contract  the  malady  ;  but  no  precautions  were  taken  against 
its  spread  until  1817,  when  Ursula  Landry  died  of  the  disease, 
and  then  all  took  alarm.  In  1847  the  government  of  New  Bruns- 
wick established  a  lazaretto  in  Tracadie,  and  there  are  now  many 
cases  there. 

When  the  Acadians  were  transported  to  Louisiana  they  took  the 
disease  with  them.  There  are  now  hundreds,  if  not  thousands,  of 
lepers  in  Louisiana.  There  are  two  leprous  centres  in  the  Teche 
River  district  of  Louisiana,  at  St.  Martinsville  and  at  Bayou 
Lafourche.  Dr.  Morrow  says  that  he  learned  of  many  scattered 
cases  along  the  line  of  the  Southern  Pacific  Railroad,  and  that  he 
saw  cases  in  the  San  Pablo  Hospital  of  Mexico  and  in  the  streets 
of  the  city.  There  are  now  very  many  cases  of  leprosy  along  the 
southern  Atlantic  coast  and  on  the  sea  islands  there,  these  cases 
being  brought  by  emigrants  from  the  West  Indies.  There  are 
said  to  be  forty-two  cases  of  leprosy  at  New  Orleans  and  one 
hundred  at  Key  West.  The  Scandinavians  have  made  leprosy 
not  particularly  uncommon  in  the  Northwestern  States.  China- 
men have  brought  the  disease  to  the  Pacific  coast,  so  that  there 
are  now  over  a  score  of  known  cases  there  and  many  more  which 
are  suspected  and  concealed. 


3l8  APPENDIX. 


Leprosy  now  exists  in  almost  every  part  of  the  world.  Its 
ravages  are  particularly  violent  in  the  Sandwich  Islands,  in  Japan 
and  China,  in  India,  Palestine,  Brazil,  Norway  and  Sweden. 
There  is  no  civilized  region  of  the  globe  where  isolated  cases  may 
not  be  found.  In  1870  there  were  said  to  be  one  hundred  and 
twenty  thousand  cases  of  leprosy  in  India.  In  the  Sandwich 
Islands  there  are  now  over  two  thousand  cases  of  leprosy  known 
and  many  more  suspected.  The  spread  of  the  disease  threatens 
the  extinction  of  the  entire  Hawaiian  race.  In  each  country 
where  it  exists  the  history  of  its  spread  is  the  same.  The  history 
of  the  Acadian  lepers  is  a  perfect  illustration.  Starting  from  a 
single  case,  brought  to  the  land  in  some  chance  way,  the  presence 
of  the  disease  is  unnoticed  until  its  virus  is  fairly  in  the  veins  of  a 
generation.  The  segregation  and  imprisonment  of  lepers  are 
then  ordered,  but  it  seems  almost  impossible  to  stay  the  slow 
creeping  of  the  disease  among  the  people. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  leprosy  is  the  most  interesting 
and  horrible  malady  known  to  man.  The  most  ancient  of  dis- 
eases, it  is  the  one  about  which  science  knows  the  least.  It  is 
absolutely  incurable,  and  all  the  remedies  which  have  been  ap- 
plied to  it  so  far  have  been  merely  experiments.  The  way  in 
which  it  is  transmitted  from  man  to  man  is  a  perfect  mystery.  It 
cannot  be  said  to  be  hereditary,  because  in  families  where  both 
parents  had  the  disease  the  children  were  perfectly  healthy,  and 
none  of  their  descendants  has  shown  the  slightest  signs  of  the 
malady.  On  the  other  hand,  in  families  where  one  or  both  of 
the  parents  are  lepers  one  child  may  be  a  leper,  while  its  brothers 
and  sisters  are  not  attacked,  and  among  the  descendants  of  all  of 
these  children  leprosy  appears  at  random.  Old  as  the  disease  is, 
the  doctors  have  never  yet  been  able  to  settle  whether  or  not  it  is 
contagious.  Thousands  of  instances  may  be  cited  where  men,  of 
no  especial  ability  to  resist  contagion,  have  passed  their  lives 
among  lepers,  mingling  with  the  lepers  in  the  most  intimate 
manner,  and  have  remained  perfectly  free  from  the  taint  of  the 
malady.  Just  as  many  instances  may  be  cited  of  people  who 
have  become  lepers  on  very  slight  exposure.  A  leprous  man  may 
marry  a  healthy  woman  and  the  woman  never  becomes  a  leper, 
and  vice  versa,  while,  on  the  contrary,  the  marriage  of  a  leper  to 
one  not  a  leper  often  produces  terrible  results. 


APPENDIX.  319 


Undoubtedly  the  first  exhaustive  investigation  into  the  mys- 
teries of  the  disease  was  that  made  by  Drs.  Danielssen  and 
Boeck,  in  Norway,  in  1848.  In  Norway  most  of  the  cases  of 
leprosy  occur  among  the  very  poorest  classes  of  the  inhabitants, 
and  especially  among  those  living  around  the  shores  of  the  deep 
bays  or  fiords  on  the  west  coast.  The  huts  of  the  people  gen- 
erally are  of  one  low,  narrow  room,  in  which  all  the  family  live, 
with  a  small  window  that  is  not  made  to  open,  and  are  usually 
planted  down  in  a  damp  site  and  surrounded  by  filth.  Physi- 
cians in  Norway  and  Sweden  maintained  for  years  that  leprosy 
was  hereditary,  and  that  it  flourished  especially  among  people 
living  on  a  fish  diet,  like  those  referred  to.  In  these  districts 
fish,  frequently  in  an  uncooked,  salted,  or  dried  form,  is  the 
staple  article  of  food.  Yet  this  does  not  account,  of  course,  for 
the  extreme  prevalence  of  the  disease  in  places  where  fish  is  sel- 
dom or  rarely  eaten  ;  or  for  the  fact  that  numbers  of  people  who 
largely  consume  fish,  and  even  stale  fish,  never  develop  leprosy. 

In  the  American  Medical  Record  ®i  August  16.  1884,  Dr.  Gred- 
dings,  of  Aiken,  S.  C,  says  : 

"  Isolated  cases  of  leprosy  have  been  observed  in  Charleston 
and  its  vicinity  for  many  years,  the  present  being  the  latest  of  a 
series  of  twenty  that  have  been  brought  to  my  notice  during  the 
last  twenty-five  years.  ...  In  none  of  these  cases  was  the  disease 
hereditary,  although  in  one  instance  a  mother  and  daughter  were 
affected  at  the  same  time." 

A  few  years  ago  the  question  of  the  contagiousness  of  leprosy 
was  made  the  subject  of  an  elaborate  report  to  the  Board  of 
Health  in  Hawaii  by  the  physicians  in  charge  of  the  leper  settle- 
ment there.  Prominent  among  those  making  the  report  was  Dr. 
Edward  Arning,  a  German  expert  who  was  employed  by  the 
Hawaiian  government  to  study  the  disease.  The  investigations 
made  by  Dr.  Arning  resulted  in  confirming  the  discovery  of  Dr. 
Hansen,  of  Norway,  that  leprosy  was  the  work  of  a  bacillus  known 
as  the  "  bacillus  leprae."  Dr.  Arning  made  some  interesting  ex- 
periments on  a  human  being,  inoculating  with  the  bacillus  leprae 
the  condemned  convict  Keanu.  The  sentence  of  Keanu  was 
commuted  to  penal  servitude  for  life  for  the  purpose  of  the 
experiments,  the  prisoner  himself  assenting  to  the  arrangement. 
Keanu  was  inoculated  with  the  leprous  germ  in  September,  1884, 


320  APPENDIX. 


but  he  has  never  developed  the  disease.  As  the  result  of  all  his 
experiments,  Dr.  Arning  made  the  following  statement  of  what 
he  regarded  as  proved  : 

1.  The  bacillus  leprse  is  a  parasite  limited  to  the  human  race. 

2.  It  must  be  transmitted  either  directly  from  individual  to  in- 
dividual, or 

3.  Run  through  a  stage  of  intermediate  life  (spore  condition), 
which  we.  are  at  present  unable  to  detect,  but  which  may  be 
present  in  the  soil,  water,  or  food,  but  can  only  get  into  them 
from  the  diseased  tissue  of  the  leper. 

4.  Accepting  either  theory,  the  direct  or  indirect  transmission, 
we  must  look  upon  every  individual  leper,  whether  in  the  in- 
cipient or  advanced  stage  of  .the  disease,  as  a  dangerous  focus  of 
the  malady,  he  multiplying  and  nursing  the  germ  in  his  tissues. 

5.  As  every  seed  requires  its  peculiar  conditions  of  soil,  atmos- 
phere, etc.,  to  allow  it  to  strike,  and,  when  struck,  to  grow  up  to 
be  itself  a  seed-bearing  plant,  so  does  the  leprous  germ  require  a 
certain  disposition  of  the  human  soil  to  strike  and  thrive.     What 
this  peculiar  disposition  may  be,  we  are  at  present  unable  to 
define.     It   is   evidently  a  disposition  which   may  coexist   with 
apparent  good  health,  as  many  examples  of  strong,  robust  men 
developing  leprosy  show  us.     This  disposition  may  possibly  be 
transmitted  by  heredity.  I  desire  not  to  be  misunderstood  on  this 
particular  point.     I  do  not  believe  that  leprosy  itself  is  in  any 
case  congenital ;  but  I  do  believe  that  a  certain  weakness  to  resist 
its  attacks  may  be  transmitted. 

This  was  as  definite  as  Dr.  Arning  would  put  things.  It 
amounted  to  saying  in  plain  words  that  leprosy  was  sometimes 
contagious  and  sometimes  not,  "  requiring  a  certain  disposition 
to  thrive."  Dr.  Arning  had  a  disagreement  with  the  officials  of 
the  Board  of  Health,  in  consequence  of  which  he  resigned  his 
place  and  left  Hawaii  in  the  latter  part  of  1884. 

Dr.  Fitch  declared  that  the  spread  of  the  disease  was  due  to 
heredity.  Superintendent  Mouritz,  of  the  settlement,  said  that 
all  this  talk  was  rubbish  in  view  of  the  enormous  spread  of  the 
disease.  In  1847  there  were  no  cases  of  leprosy  in  the  Hawaiian 
archipelago,  and  there  are  now  there  fully  two  thousand  five  hun- 
dred. Heredity  cannot  account  for  this.  Dr.  Mouritz's  remarks 
are  very  interesting.  He  says  : 


APPENDIX,  321 


The  whole  history  of  leprosy  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands,  from  its 
propagation  to  its  present  rapid  spread  and  development,  verily 
proves  that  it  can  only  be  accounted  for  by  regarding  it  as  a 
contagious  disease.  Whatever  else  may  be  said  of  its  being  non- 
contagious  in  other  ancient  countries  where  the  disease  exists 
endemically,  these  statements  do  not  apply,  or  should  not  apply, 
to  the  disease  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands. 

That  leprosy  did  not  prevail  on  these  islands  until  many  years 
after  they  were  open  to  foreign  intercourse  receives  great  confir- 
mation in  the  fact  that  no  true  aboriginal  word  is  in  use  for  the 
name  of  the  disease.  I  consider  this  a  most  significant  illustra- 
tion of  the  rapid  spread  of  leprosy  within  a  comparatively  short 
era.  I  believe  it  perfectly  safe  to  affirm  that,  did  leprosy  exist 
among  the  ancient  Hawaiians,  they  would  not  call  it,  as  the  pres- 
ent race  do,  "  Chinese  sickness."  Whatever  defects  the  Hawaiian 
language  may  have,  a  very  casual  observation  shows  that  it  was 
in  the  highest  degree,  and  is,  a  language  of  minuteness  and  ex- 
actitude ;  and  it  can  scarcely  be  imagined  that  naming  a  slow, 
progressive  disease  like  leprosy  was  beyond  the  power  of  their 
intellect,  and  yet  this  is  really  what  those  who  claim  to  trace  a 
hereditary  development  alone  of  the  disease  ask  us  to  do. 

Dr.  Mouritz  refers  to  the  fact  that  the  Hawaiian  name  for  lep- 
rosy is  "  Mai  Pake,"  or  "  Chinese  sickness."  That  leprosy  was 
brought  into  the  archipelago  by  Chinamen  is  the  common  belief 
and  statement  there.  In  the  second  place,  Dr.  Mouritz  very 
pointedly  asks  those  people  who  deny  the  contagiousness  of 
leprosy  to  account  for  cases  like  those  of  Father  Damien.  Writ- 
ing in  1884  (Father  Damien  having,  of  course,  died  since),  Dr. 
Mouritz  gives  this  history  of  his  case  : 

Father  Damien  arrived  at  the  settlement  in  the  year  1873,  and 
has  lived  there  continuously  ever  since.  He  is  a  Belgian,  of  good 
physique,  and  when  he  arrived  was  thirty-four  years  of  age. 
During  all  the  period  of  his  residence  he  has  been  daily  and 
hourly  in  contact  with  lepers  of  various  grades,  and  many  very 
severe.  Until  1884  he  felt  fairly  well.  In  that  year  pains  in  the 
left  foot  troubled  him  ;  these  continued  to  get  worse,  and,  in  the 
absence  of  any  other  signs,  were  attributed  to  rheumatism.  Tow- 
ard the  end  of  the  year  1884  he  consulted  Dr.  Arning,  and  to 
this  gentleman  must  be  given  the  credit  of  diagnosing  the  dis- 


322  APPENDIX. 


ease  in  its  very  early  stage,  as  certainly  not  until  six  months 
afterward  did  external  manifestations  of  leprosy  develop.  In 
May,  1885,  there  were  no  striking  changes  in  his  face  when  ex- 
amined by  Dr.  Arning  and  myself.  In  August,  1885,  a  small 
leprous  tubercle  manifested  itself  on  the  lobe  of  the  right  ear, 
and,  from  that  date  to  the  present,  diminution  and  loss  of  eye- 
brows, infiltration  of  the  integument  over  the  forehead  and 
cheeks,  are  slowly  but  certainly  going  on,  so  that  the  case  of  Father 
Damien  is  a  confirmed  tubercular  one,  the  symptoms  and  signs 
now  present  placing  it  in  that  class. 

I  believe  the  majority  of  cases  of  leprosy  at  the  settlement,  had 
they  been  rigidly  watched,  would  fall  in  the  same  category  as 
Father  Damien's.  Most  cases  of  leprosy  are  recorded  between 
the  ages  of  thirty  and  fifty  years,  so  heredity  is  scarcely  possible. 

I  am  also  clearly  of  opinion  that  leprosy  is  contagious  at  the 
beginning  and  all  through  its  course,  and  that  the  "  exhalations  " 
from  the  leper  are  the  main  agencies  at  work. 

Dr.  Mouritz  is  of  opinion  that  leprosy  is  both  hereditary  and 
contagious.  He  believes  that  leprosy  may  be  communicated  by 
the  various  chance  kinds  of  inoculation,  as  well  as  by  inhalation. 

The  ancient  idea  about  leprosy  was  that  it  was  highly  conta- 
gious, and  the  cruel  ways  in  which  lepers  were  put  apart  from 
their  fellow-men  are  familiar  to  all  readers  of  history.  It  is  un- 
doubtedly true  that  very  many  people — perhaps  the  majority  of 
people — are  impervious  to  the  contagion,  and  that  the  disease 
indeed  requires  a  "  certain  disposition  to  strike  and  thrive."  But 
in  this  view  all  lepers  are  dangerous.  Of  the  reports  made  by 
the  physicians  at  the  leper  settlement  of  Hawaii,  that  of  Dr.  Mou- 
ritz seems  full  of  sense,  and  to  rest  upon  the  great  truth  that 
against  a  fact  the  gates  of  theory  cannot  prevail.  If  the  heroic 
Belgian  priest  who  offered  up  his  life  at  Molokai  shall  have  been 
the  means  of  notably  proving  that  the  horrible  disease  of  which 
he  died  is  actually  communicable  from  man  to  man,  he  will  indeed 
be  worthy  of  canonization  by  his  Church,  and  will  have  built  for 
himself  an  eternal  fame. 


VALUE  OF   MILK  ANALYSIS. 

A  strong  infant,  four  months  old,  was  shown  to  Dr.  Corbeau, 
a  Paris  physician.     He  was  told  that  it  had  lost  two  hundred 


APPENDIX.  •      323 


grammes  in  a  few  days  and  displayed  symptoms  of  general 
weakening,  and  at  the  same  time  of  quite  copious  vomiting.  He 
was  informed  that  the  nurse,  who  appeared  to  be  a  buxom  girl 
with  a  bust  as  ample  as  could  be  desired,  was  indisposed  for 
the  second  time  since  she  had  been  nursing  the  child.  During 
the  interrogation  the  physician  learned  that  the  woman  had  now 
been  nursing  for  about  a  year.  Still  it  must  in  justice  be  said 
that  M.  Corbeau  admitted  that  except  during  the  previous  two 
weeks  the  infant  had  developed  most  satisfactorily.  But  since 
the  child  was  complaining  now,  what  could  be  the  cause  of  it  ? 
An  idea  came  naturally  to  his  mind,  old  milk.  This  expression, 
by  its  very  vagueness,  did  not  much  improve  matters.  Further- 
more, the  nurse  protested,  and  called  to  witness  the  excellence 
of  the  previous  services  that  she  had  rendered  to  the  child.  Two 
samples  of  the  suspected  milk  were  taken,  and  M.  Maquart, 
druggist,  formerly  attached  to  the  Paris  hospitals,  subjected 
them  to  a  most  scrupulous  examination.  They  were  analyzed  by 
four  different  processes,  which  all  gave  absolutely  identical 
results  : 

Density,  10.30  and  10.35. 

Fatty  substances,  normal. 

Caseine,  only  slight  traces. 

The  conclusion  to  be  drawn  was  self-evident,  and  the  nurse 
had  to  be  discharged  ;  another  one  took  her  place,  and  as  she 
offered  all  the  necessary  requisites,  the  child  was  seen  under  her 
care  to  regain  its  former  state  in  almost  no  time. 


NECESSARY  QUALITIES  IN  A  STOVE. 

The  legislation  of  the  French  authorities  is  as  paternal  in 
some  things  as  ours  is  vexatious  in  others,  and  so  the 
Academy  of  Medicine  have  sought  to  lay  down  the  rules 
that  should  govern  the  stove-makers.  The  following  is  a 
copy  of  the  resolutions  agreed  upon  by  that  body,  and 
although  the  subject  would  hardly  be  thought  of  sufficient 
magnitude  for  the  consideration  even  of  a  legislature  that 
has  made  it  a  statutory  offence  to  feed  a  sparrow,  yet  they 
are  well  worth  attention  : 


324  APPENDIX. 


First. — The  sale  of  a  stove  should  not  be  authorized  unless  its 
draught  is  sufficient  to  transform  the  carbon  into  carbonic  acid. 

Second. — No  pipe  of  a  movable  stove  should  be  allowed  to  be 
fitted  to  any  chimney  unless  the  chimney  has  a  suitable  and 
adequate  draught. 

Third. — An  examination  of  the  neighboring  chimneys  should 
be  required  before  setting  up  a  stove,  to  avoid  the  gases  from 
one  chimney  being  driven  back  or  filtering  into  another,  and  to 
preserve  the  interested  parties  or  their  neighbors  from  being 
poisoned  at  a  distance  by  oxycarbonic  gas. 

Fourth, — The  public  should  be  warned  of  the  danger  that  is 
incurred  by  having,  during  the  night,  in  an  adjoining  room,  one 
of  these  slowly  burning  stoves. 


ANIMAL   PARASITES. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  papers  recently  published  on 
this  subject  appeared  last  year  in  the  Journal  of  the  Ameri- 
can Medical  Association,  from  the  pen  of  Dr.  Bayard  Holmes, 
Director  of  the  Bacteriological  Laboratory  at  the  Chicago 
Medical  College.  It  is  deserving  very  careful  perusal.  Dr. 
Holmes  is  a  most  industrious  investigator  and  his  observa- 
tions are  eminently  practical. 

There  are  very  few  students  of  nature  to-day,  wrote  the  doctor, 
who  are  not  imbued  with  the  philosophy  of  evolution.  Every 
isolated  fact  in  the  life  of  an  organism  takes  on  an  added  interest 
when  viewed  in  its  relations  to  the  great  principle  of  natural 
selection.  From  the  standpoint  of  the  evolutionist,  the  subject  of 
parasitism  is  a  very  extensive  one,  and  the  relations  of  the  patho- 
genic micro-organisms  to  their  host  occupy  only  a  limited  district 
in  this  great  province  of  thought. 

It  can  be  fairly  presumed  that  those  relations  of  conviviality 
which  we  see  existing  between  mutualists,  between  messmates, 
and  between  host  and  parasites,  are  subjects  for  natural  selection. 
Indeed,  the  study  of  the  fertilization  of  flowers  shows  us  the  most 
intimate  dependence  of  a  large  number  of  plants  upon  their 
animal  parasites,  and  this,  too,  accompanied  by  changes  in  the 
essential  organs  of  those  plants  which  produced  forms  most  con- 


APPENDIX. 


325 


fusing  to  the  earlier  botanists.  So  mutually  beneficial  is  the 
association  of  certain  species,  that  they  have  been  called  mutual- 
ists.  These  relations  are  so  far-reaching  and  intricate  that  they 
surprise  us  into  the  belief  that  the  destruction  of  a  single  para- 
sitic species  would  overthrow  the  equilibrium  of  animal  life  and 
result  in  changes  little  short  of  a  biological  revolution.  I  may 
cite  the  classical  observation  of  Darwin  : 

"  In  several  parts  of  the  world  insects  determine  the  existence 
of  cattle.  Perhaps  Paraguay  offers  the  most  curious  instance  of 
this  *  for  here  neither  cattle  nor  horses  nor  dogs  have  ever  run 
wild,  though  they  swarm  southward  and  westward  in  a  feral  state  ; 
and  Azara  and  Reuyger  have  shown  that  this  is  caused  by  the 
greater  number  in  Paraguay  of  a  certain  fly,  which  lays  its  eggs  in 
the  navels  of  these  animals  when  first  born.  The  increase  of 
these  flies,  numerous  as  they  are,  must  be  habitually  checked  by 
some  means,  probably  by  other  parasitic  insects.  Hence  if 
certain  insectivorous  birds  were  to  decrease  in  Paraguay,  the 
parasitic  insects  would  probably  increase  ;  and  this  would  lessen 
the  number  of  navel-frequenting  flies — then  cattle  and  horses 
would  become  feral,  and  this  would  certainly  greatly  alter  (as, 
indeed,  I  have  observed  in  parts  of  South  America)  the  vegeta- 
tion ;  this  again  would  largely  affect  the  insects  ;  and  this,  as  we 
have  just  seen  in  Staffordshire,  the  insectivorous  birds,  and  so 
onward  in  ever-increasing  circles  of  complexity." 

The  greater  number  of  parasites  are  found  among  the  lesser 
plants  and  animals.  This  is  as  we  should  suppose.  The  parasite 
deriving  its  support  from  a  smaller  organism  would  soon  destroy 
its  host,  and  itself  perish  in  turn.  It  is  secure  in  its  position 
of  parasitism  only  while  it  takes  from  its  host  no  more  than  can 
easily  be  spared.  The  condition  of  parasitism  then  exists  best 
when  the  assistance  which  the  parasite  demands  can  be  granted 
without  material  injury  to  the  host,  or,  when  the  parasite  is  actu- 
ally beneficial,  or  even  essential  to  the  existence  of  the  host 
species. 

There  is  scarcely  any  end  to  the  variations  and  modifications 
which  an  organism  may  undergo  by  natural  selection,  provided  a 
sufficient  time  be  allowed  for  the  changes  to  be  undergone.  And, 
moreover,  there  is  no  part  of  an  organism  which  may  not  be 
modified  by  this  agency  if  such  changes  become  advantageous  to 


326  APPENDIX. 


it  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  When,  therefore,  we  find  an 
adaptation  of  great  complexity  we  must  assume  that  the  relations 
requiring  such  adaptation  have  been  in  action  proportionately  a 
long  time.  This  is  not  only  the  case  in  the  adaptations  of  an 
organism  to  its  lifeless  environments,  but  it  is  in  the  same  degree 
the  case  in  the  adaptations  existing  between  host  and  parasite  or 
between  messmates. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  of  these  convivial  adaptations  is 
related  by  Charles  Darwin  in  regard  to  the  slave-making  ants. 

"  This  ant  (Formica  rufescens)  is  absolutely  dependent  cfti  its 
slaves  ;  without  their  aid,  the  species  would  certainly  become 
extinct  in  a  single  year.  The  males  and  fertile  females  do  no 
work  of  any  kind,  and  the  workers  or  sterile  females,  though  most 
energetic  and  courageous  in  capturing  slaves,  do  no  other  work. 
They  are  incapable  of  making  their  own  nests,  or  of  feeding  their 
own  larvae.  When  one  of  the  old  nests  is  found  inconvenient  and 
they  have  to  migrate,  it  is  the  slaves  which  determine  the  migra- 
tion, and  actually  carry  their  masters  in  their  jaws.  So  utterly 
helpless  are  the  masters  that  when  Huber  shut  up  thirty  of  them 
without  a  slave,  but  with  plenty  of  food  which  they  liked  best,  and 
with  their  own  larvae  and  pupae  to  stimulate  them  to  work,  they 
did  nothing ;  they  could  not  even  feed  themselves,  and  many 
perished  of  hunger.  Huber  then  introduced  a  single  slave 
(Formica  fusca),  and  she  instantly  set  to  work,  fed  and  saved  the 
survivors,  made  some  cells,  attended  to  the  larvae,  and  put  all  to 
rights." 

Such  an  adaptation  of  a  whole  species  to  an  artificial  condition 
would  be  wholly  anomalous  and  unexplainable  were  it  not  for  the 
fact  that  related  species  have  been  studied  in  distant  localities 
that  show  a  less  complete  adaptation  to  any  dependence  upon  the 
condition  of  slavery.  This  complicate  social  arrangement  prob- 
ably arose  by  accident.  The  larvae  of  neighboring  colonies  were 
stolen  for  food.  They  were  hid  away  until  hunger  should  require 
them,  some  of  them  hatched  out  and  were  fed  and  brought  up, 
aud  proved  useful  servants.  The  workers  of  such  colonies  had 
more  time  for  warfare  and  pillage,  and  so  the  number  of  slaves 
went  on  increasing  from  generation  to  generation  with  further 
adaptation  to  the  new  mode  of  life  until  the  instinct  for  robbery 
took  the  place  of  the  instinct  for  work.  It  must  have  required  a 


APPENDIX. 


327 


long  time  to  change  the  habits  and  instincts  and  structure  of 
a  whole  species  in  this  way.  Among  the  Swiss  Formica  rufes- 
cens  slaves  are  a  necessity  to  the  existence  of  the  species.  In 
England  the  Formica  sanguinca  has  slaves  only  as  a  convenience, 
and  its  workers  attend  to  a  large  share  of  the  work  themselves. 
Among  other  species  in  all  parts  of  the  world  slaves  are  tolerated 
only  as  waifs  and  they  enter  very  little  into  the  economy  of  the 
community. 

Time,  then,  is  a  most  important  factor  in  the  action  of  natural 
selection,  and  any  condition  of  .parasitism  is  a  very  ancient  one 
indeed  which  is  so  perfectly  developed  that  the  life  of  the  para- 
sitic species  or  the  life  of  the  host  species  is  dependent  upon  its 
uninterrupted  perpetuation  for  its  existence. 

The  antiquity  of  the  parasitic  condition,  however,  does  not 
correspond  exactly  with  the  complexity  of  the  morphological 
adaptation  between  species,  for  we  find  that  among  the  flowering 
plants  adaptations  have  been  secured  limiting  the  fertilization  of 
a  species,  which  adaptations  render  the  extinction  of  a  single 
species  of  insect  in  a  neighborhood  equivalent  to  the  extinction 
of  the  same  plants  in  the  same  area.  It  is  evident  that  the  varia- 
tion of  the  more  complex  plants  is  much  more  rapid  and  exten- 
sive than  the  variations  of  lower  forms,  for  we  find  that  some  of 
the  lowest  forms  of  plants  and  animals  have  existed  from  the 
earliest  geological  epochs,  while  the  more  complex  forms  rarely 
present  evidence  of  so  great  a  longevity. 

We  are  accustomed  to  look  upon  chlorophyl  almost  as  an 
essential  to  vegetable  existence,  yet  there  is  a  great  number  of 
thallogens  which  are  perfectly  devoid  of  this  substance.  Those 
plants  which  contain  chlorophyl  are  able  to  elaborate  from  the 
stable  inorganic  constituents  of  earth  and  air,  with  the  help 
of  that  force  which  they  derive  from  the  sun's  rays,  organic,  un- 
stable, compounds  of  a  very  complex  molecular  condition.  Those 
plants  which  are  devoid  of  chlorophyl  must  depend  for  their 
vital  force  not  upon  the  sun's  rays,  but  upon  the  energy  released 
by  the  decomposition  of  those  molecules  of  unstable  equilibrium 
which  have  been  built  up  in  the  growth  of  the  chlorophyl-pro- 
ducing  plants  and  in  that  of  animals. 

Thus  we  see  that  by  their  very  nature  those  plants  devoid  of 
chlorophyl  are  eminently  adapted  to  a  saprophytic  or  parasitic 


328  APPENDIX. 


existence  ;  in  fact  any  other  mode  of  life  is  shut  off  to  them.  In 
this  class  are  found  the  bacteria. 

While  adaptations  of  a  most  complex  character  are  granted  in 
the  case  of  such  large  parasites  as  the  tape-worms,  the  flukes,  and 
the  itch  insect,  the  same  possibilities  have  been  denied  to  such 
unicellular  plants  as  the  bacteria.  The  micrococci  average  about 
one  micron  in  diameter.  To  the  best  objectives  they  have  about 
as  much  individuality  as  a  single  star  had  in  the  field  of  the  tele- 
scope before  the  introduction  of  the  spectroscope.  Does  this 
prevent  the  greatest  morphological  and  physiological  complex- 
ity ?  Not  at  all.  The  spermatozoa  of  man  is  not  much  larger, 
and  yet  it  carries  with  it  peculiarities  of  form,  color,  voice,  and 
psychological  functions  which  are  as  complex  as  human  life. 
Surely  if  this  is  the  case,  we  do  not  need  to  question  the  pos- 
sibility of  sufficient  room  in  a  microbe  for  all  the  complexity  of 
structure  and  function  which  the  argument  of  this  paper  demands. 

That  there  is  no  corresponding  differentiation  of  structure  to 
be  seen  by  the  most  powerful  microscope  does  not  matter,  for 
light  is  so  gross  a  thing  that  nothing  more  could  be  expected. 
The  extreme  diameter  of  a  micrococcus  is  say  one  micron  ;  the 
length  of  a  wave  of  light  in  the  middle  of  the  visible  spectrum  is 
about  YZ  a  micron  (E  =  .5269  microns).  What  more  can  be  ex- 
pected with  such  a  measure  ?  Our  only  hope  in  this  direction 
lies  in  the  use  of  much  shorter  waves  which  are  far  above  the 
lavender  and  at  the  limit  of  photographic  recognition. 

When  a  parasite  is  wholly  dependent  upon  its  host  for  its  ex- 
istence, it  is  said  to  be  an  obligate  parasite  ;  when  a  parasite  is 
able  to  live  outside  the  host  species  upon  dead  animal  or  vegeta- 
ble matter  only  with  difficulty,  it  is  called  a  facultative  sapro- 
phyte ;  and  when  a  species  which  ordinarily  lives  a  saprophytic 
existence  is  able  under  favorable  circumstances  to  become  a 
parasite  it  is  called  a  facultative  parasite. 

I  will  here  refer  only  to  obligate  and  to  facultative  parasites, 
for,  although  there  are  equally  interesting  relations  existing  be- 
tween the  facultative  saprophytes,  in  the  consideration  of  one  of 
them  I  have  already  occupied  some  of  the  time  of  this  society. 

Our  tape-worms  are  examples  of  obligate  parasites.  They  can- 
not live  outside  the  bodies  of  their  hosts.  They  depend  for  their 
existence  upon  the  fact  that  the  carnivora  devour  the  herbivora. 


APPENDIX.  329 


The  eggs  of  the  tape-worm  are  innumerable.  They  are  scattered 
by  the  carnivorous  host  in  its  faeces.  The  rains  wash  them  into 
little  pools  and  brooks,  and  scatter  them  upon  the  foliage  and 
grasses.  The  herbivorous  host  takes  them  into  its  stomach  in 
the  water  it  drinks,  or  on  the  grass  it  eats.  The  warmth  and 
secretions  of  the  stomach  free  the  embryos  from  the  imprison- 
ment of  their  egg-shells.  They  cling  to  the  wall  of  the  digestive 
tract  until  they  gain  strength  to  force  their  way  into  the  blood 
currents.  There  they  remain  until  they  are  carried  to  the  smallest 
capillaries,  in  which  they  establish  themselves,  and,  for  some  un- 
known reason,  they  prefer  the  muscles.  Here  they  go  into  a  sort  of 
pupa  state,  to  await  the  time  when  their  herbivorous  host  will  be 
overtaken  and  devoured  by  a  carnivorous  enemy.  In  the  stom- 
ach of  the  carnivorous  second  host,  the  wall  of  the  pupa  is 
dissolved.  They  are  provided  with  hooks  which  attach  them- 
selves to  the  villi,  or  deeper  structures  of  the  intestines.  Here 
they  are  bathed  in  a  well-digested  nourishing  material  until  they 
grow  to  a  relatively  enormous  size  and  produce  from  each  seg- 
ment of  their  bodies  millions  of  eggs  to  pursue  a  similar  struggle 
for  existence.  What  an  enormous  number  of  eggs  perish  because 
they  never  come  into  the  proper  host,  what  millions  of  encysted 
pupse  die  in  their  calcined  cocoons,  what  thousands  pass  through 
the  intestinal  canal  without  finding  a  proper  place  to  attach  them- 
selves, all  that  a  single  mature  and  sexually  perfect  tape-worm 
may  find  a  place  in  which  to  vegetate  and  procreate !  What  a 
wonderful  cycle  of  existence  is  this,  and  what  innumerable  ages 
must  it  have  required  to  develop  out  of  the  accidental  ingestion 
of  living  independent  articulate  such  a  complex  and  obligate 
parasite  !  And  what  can  be  said  of  the  parasites  of  the  cat,  which 
live  the  first  part  of  their  existence  only  in  the  mouse,  and  of  the 
tenias  of  the  dog  and  wolf,  whose  cysticercus  form  is  found  in 
rabbits.  How  long  did  it  require  these  specific  forms  to  develop 
from  original  generic  species  f  Unfortunately  we  can  never  know, 
but  we  must  assume  that  it  has  been  a  very  long  time. 

The  relation  of  man  to  the  domestic  animals  furnishes  us  the 
only  approximate  measure  of  the  rapidity  of  these  changes. 
Under  domestication  a  few  mammals,  birds,  fishes,  insects,  mol- 
lusks,  and  some  vegetables  have  become  so  modified  that  they 
cannot  be  referred  to  any  undomesticated  species.  How  far 


330  APPENDIX. 


back  must  man  have  begun  to  cultivate  the  banana,  which  now  is 
seedless  and  would  perish  as  a  species  without  his  care  ?  Surely 
so  long  ago  that  we  need  some  other  measure  than  the  century. 
But  to  have  evolved  a  parasite  with  such  complex  and  limited 
relations  as  those  of  the  tenia  must  have  taken  a  much  longer 
time.  And  how  shall  we  explain  the  fact  that  the  Temocephala 
chtlensis,  a  small  parasite  on  the  legs  of  certain  fresh-water  crusta- 
ceans of  Chili,  occurs  identical  in  species  in  the  Philippines  and 
in  Java  on  other  articulates  ?  Wallace  has  justly  observed  that 
such  cases  ought  to  be  regarded  as  proof  of  the  hypothesis  that 
those  types  which  have  occasioned  the  similarity  of  remote 
faunas  must  have  had  a  very  long  historical  duration,  persisting, 
very  likely,  through  many  geological  epochs, 

This,  perhaps,  calls  forcibly  enough  to  our  minds  the  antiquity 
of  these  forms  of  parasitism.  Let  us  for  a  moment  consider  the 
origin  of  such  forms  of  parasitism  as  tuberculosis  and  the  other 
acute  and  chronic  infectious  diseases  of  man  and  animals. 
While  some  of  them  are  still  under  dispute,  tuberculosis,  syphilis, 
and  measles  are  recognized  as  entities,  and  they  are  considered 
by  all  fair-minded  and  unprejudiced  scientists  and  physicians  as 
due  to  distinct  and  specific  parasites.  These  parasites  are,  so  far 
as  we  know,  specifically  different  from  any  non-parasitic  organ- 
ism to  which  they  are  genetically  related.  Nor  can  it  for  a 
moment  be  supposed  that  the  parasitic  bacteria  are  in  any  other 
category  in  relation  to  the  influence  of  natural  selection  than  the 
parasites  which  belong  to  more  highly  differentiated  orders  of  life. 
Indeed,  the  very  fact  that  the  lowest  and  most  slowly  varying 
vegetables  have  become  obligate  parasites  is  evidence  of  an  asso- 
ciation greater  in  time  than  we  should  consider  necessary  for  the 
evolution  of  a  much  more  complex  relation  existing  between  the 
more  rapidly  varying  articulates  or  infusoria. 

It  appears  that  the  bacillus  of  tuberculosis  is  unable  to  grow 
on  any  accidental  or  artificial  media  under  any  presumable 
natural  conditions  of  temperature  and  external  surroundings.  It 
is  able  to  multiply  in  man  and  in  some  other  mammals,  and  in  a 
few  related  vertebrates.  Therefore,  we  may  presume  that,  should 
it  be  deprived  of  a  living  host  even  a  day  beyond  the  few  months 
during  which  its  spores  might  retain  vitality,  the  species  would 
become  wholly  extinct,  and  the  world  would  be  free  ever  after- 


APPENDIX.  331 

wards  from  the  ravages  of  this  dreadful  scourge.  The  bacillus  of 
tuberculosis  is  then  an  obligate  parasite  of  the  warm-blooded 
animals.  When  we  consider  what  specific  difference  means,  and 
how  perfectly  the  bacillus  of  tuberculosis  manifests  this  differ- 
ence, and  when  we  see  how  great  is  its  geographical  distribution, 
we  are  compelled  to  go  back  far  into  the  present  geological 
epoch,  and  probably  beyond  it,  for  its  origin. 

In  the  bacillus  of  syphilis  we  have  a  still  closer  obligate  para- 
site. It  is  confined  to  the  Primates  alone.  All  attempts  to  con- 
vey it  from  man  to  animals  other  than  the  Quadrumana  and  to 
artificial  media  have  been  equally  unsuccessful.  Here,  then,  is  a 
peculiar  parasite  which  finds  in  the  intimate  structure  or  other 
bodily  conditions  of  all  animals  except  a  limited  class  such  con- 
ditions as  are  altogether  inimical  to  its  reproduction.  Since  it  is 
a  parasite  of  as  simple  structure,  and  since  it  varies  as  slowly,  as 
tuberculosis,  we  must  look  still  further  back  into  the  past  for  its 
origin  in  independent  forms. 

In  measles  we  have  an  example  of  a  parasite  which  is  not  only 
confined  to  a  single  species,  but  for  the  most  part  to  the  young 
of  that  species.  Perhaps  the  most  unexplainable  feature  of  this 
parasitic  disease  is  the  fact  that  one  attack  renders  the  host  im- 
mune to  subsequent  invasion.  This  fact  is  phenomenal  and,  so 
far  as  I  know,  wholly  without  explanation. 

Looking  upon  these  obligate  parasites  of  man  as  of  such 
ancient  association,  going  back  beyond  the  present  geological 
epoch  for  the  beginning  of  syphilis,  tuberculosis,  measles,  scarlet- 
fever,  small-pox,  whooping-cough,  leprosy,  and  every  form  of 
tape-worm,  how  is  it  possible  that  man  has  been  able  to  withstand 
the  attacks  of  so  many  enemies  for  so  long  a  time  ?  The  very 
fact  that  he  has  survived,  and  that  these  parasites  are  unable  to 
exist  in  any  other  media  than  his  living  body,  is  conclusive  proof 
that  they  are  not  essentially  destructive  parasites  ;  for  with  the 
destruction  of  the  host  species  occurs  the  destruction  of  the  obli- 
gate parasite.  Such  a  proposition  appears  to  be  axiomatic,  but 
axioms  occasionally  need  to  be  formulated.  Given  abundant 
opportunity  of  contagion,  a  destructive  obligate  parasite  is  incon- 
ceivable. It  is  possible  only  when  its  destructiveness  does  not 
interfere  with  the  reproduction  of  the  host  species,  as  after  the 
reproduction  act  has  been  performed. 


332  APPENDIX. 


How  different  from  the  mild  course  of  syphilis,  tuberculosis, 
leprosy,  and  the  acute  infectious  diseases  is  that  of  tetanus, 
anthrax,  malignant  oedema,  and  other  forms  of  gangrene  and  the 
various  wound  diseases.  Among  domestic  animals,  when  en- 
couraged by  overcrowding  and  filth,  the  saprophytic  bacteria 
produce  equally  destructive  diseases.  Take,  for  example,  Texas 
fever,  hog  cholera,  and  ranch-brand.  So,  too,  is  it  with  yellow- 
fever,  Asiatic  cholera,  malaria,  and  diphtheria,  which  are  doubt- 
less facultative  parasites  of  man.  To  these  rare  and  accidental 
parasites  we  have  in  our  skin  and  mucous  membranes  a  most 
careful  and  adequate  protection.  By  the  action  of  natural  selec- 
tion the  door  to  invasion  has  been  closed,  but  within  we  have  no 
adequate  means  of  defence  ;  .so  when  infection  does  accidentally 
take  place  and  the  usual  saprophytes  become  parasites,  the 
chances  are  greatly  against  the  host  in  the  conflict  that  ensues. 
The  facultative  parasites  may  or  they  may  not  be  destructive, 
and  it  is  probable  that  against  but  few  of  them  has  the  action 
of  natural  selection  rendered  us  indurate. 

While  we  are  accustomed  to  look  upon  syphilis,  tuberculosis, 
and  leprosy  as  excessively  destructive  diseases,  a  moment's  con- 
sideration is  enough  to  clear  our  minds  of  this  traditional  notion. 
Syphilis,  in  the  strong  and  healthy  Caucasian,  frequently  runs  the 
first  and  second  stages  of  its  course  without  recognition,  and  does 
not,  therefore,  interfere  with  procreation.  When  the  infirmities 
of  age  confine  the  patient  to  unfavorable  surroundings  and  habits 
of  life,  the  tertiary  symptoms  come  on  with  the  reduced  vitality 
and  nutrition.  Fatal  or  destructive  syphilis  in  the  otherwise  well 
and  healthy  is  rare.  In  children  and  in  poorly  nourished  young 
people,  and  in  those  suffering  from  chronic  diseases,  it  frequently 
appears  as  a  terminal  affection. 

Tuberculosis  in  the  lymph  glands  of  the  neck,  in  the  bones  and 
joints,  in  the  ear,  and  even  in  the  peritoneum,  is  not  very  de- 
structive. It  is  frequently  followed  by  recovery.  Even  in  the 
lungs  tuberculosis  may  run  a  chronic  and  rather  harmless  course, 
and  interfere  very  little  with  the  reproduction  of  the  species.  It 
is  only  after  pyogenic  infection  of  the  tubercular  tissues  of  the 
lungs  or  other  areas  that  sepsis  and  symptoms  called  "  hectic  " 
appear.  This  sepsis  is  then  the  destructive  factor,  as  it  is  in 
wound  reaction. 


APPENDIX.  333 


Leprosy  is  the  closest  obligate  parasite  of  man  so  far  observed. 
The  bacillus  of  leprosy  bears  a  remarkable  morphological  relation 
and  staining  reaction  to  the  prime  factors  of  tuberculosis  and 
syphilis.  It  is  almost  never  a  destructive  disease,  and  it  appears 
only  in  those  who  could  have  already  accomplished  the  repro- 
ductive act ;  therefore  it  does  not  interfere  with  the  perpetuation 
of  the  species.  It  is  conveyed  by  contact,  but  only  with  diffi- 
culty, and  there  is  evidence  that  it  is  not  necessarily  hereditary  ; 
that  is  to  say,  healthy  children  may  be  born  of  those  who  are 
suffering  from  leprosy.  The  attendants  on  persons  suffering 
from  leprosy  are  not  often  affected  with  the  disease,  but  often 
enough  to  demonstrate  its  contagiousness. 

In  certain  of  the  infectious  diseases  one  attack  protects  from 
subsequent  invasion.  This  is  the  case  not  only  with  the  obligate 
bacterial  parasites,  but  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  with  the  facul- 
tative parasites.  It  is  interesting  to  compare  the  destructive 
power  of  our  principal  infectious  diseases,  the  ease  of  infection, 
and  the  acquired  immunity  to  succeeding  invasion.  In  measles 
we  have  a  comparatively  harmless  disease,  the  greatest  ease  of 
infection,  with  subsequent  immunity.  Scarlet-fever  is  not  so 
harmless,  is  less  contagious,  and  equally  protective.  Small-pox  is 
more  destructive,  less  contagious,  and  equally  protective.  Yellow- 
fever  is  far  more  destructive,  and  far  less  contagious,  and  equally 
protective.  Leprosy  conveys  no  immunity,  for  the  disease  rarely 
terminates  in  recovery,  but  the  infection  is  accomplished  with 
the  greatest  difficulty,  and  the  spread  of  the  disease  is  slow. 
Syphilis  is  not  very  destructive,  it  has  a  difficult  but  certain 
method  of  infection,  and  one  attack  does  not  so  surely  protect 
against  subsequent  recurrence.  Instances  of  this  kind  could 
easily  be  multiplied,  bringing  in  other  factors  which  act  in  pro- 
ducing immunity  or  protection  or  physiological  resistance,  all 
brought  about  by  the  obvious  necessities  of  the  law  of  the  survival 
of  the  fittest  and  that  of  heredity. 

If  a  few  indulgent  and  patient  readers  have  followed  my  argu- 
ments to  this  point,  the  suggestion  of  a  possible  practical  appli- 
cation will  be  redundant.  It  is  obvious  that  a  comprehension  of 
these  limitations  of  parasitism  would  not  only  direct  future 
biological  research,  but  materially  assist  in  suggesting  therapeutic 
measures.  They  also  furnish  a  perspective  in  which  limited  data 


334  APPENDIX. 


may  be  studied  by  the  side  of  more  complete  facts,  and  they 
offer  the  greatest  promise  of  a  rich  harvest  in  a  neglected  field 
of  thought. 

However  we  may  look  upon  some  of  the  minor  points  of  this 
argument,  or  whatever  exceptions  we  may  take  to  the  illustrations, 
we  may  fairly  agree  upon  the  following  predictions  : 

1.  All  obligate  parasites   are   without  exception  examples  of 
very  ancient  parasitism,  and  what  is  of  more  practical  moment, 
they  are  necessarily  non-destructive  to  the  host  species. 

2.  The   destructive   action   of   the   obligate   parasites  is  only 
manifested   towards   the   weaker  individuals   of  the   race,   and 
therefore  they  are  a  factor  in  the  evolution  of  a  strong  and  wise 
and  morally  temperate  nation.. 

3.  The  dangerous  consequences  of   secondary  infection  with 
destructive  facultative  parasites  is  emphasized,  and  the  physician 
is  taught  that  as  happy  results  may  be  expected  in  the  antiseptic 
treatment  of  the  infectious  diseases  as  have  followed  similar 
indication  in  the  treatment  of  wounds. 

4.  The  great  field  of  expectant  medicine  lies  in  the  treatment 
of  diseases  due  to  obligate  parasites,  while  the  great  field  of  pre- 
ventive medicine  is  to  be  found  in  providing  against  infection 
with  facultative  parasites. 

5.  The  use  of  qiiinine  in  malaria  and  the  efficacy  of  mercury 
in  syphilis  will  always  encourage  a  careful  look-out  for  specifics 
for  other   parasitic  diseases,  especially  in   those   that   manifest 
symptoms  of  infection  of  the  blood-currents. 

6.  The  artificial  immunity  to  small-pox  which  is  acquired  by 
vaccination  is  suggestive  of  possibilities  which  will  be  applicable 
to  all  those  diseases  in  which  one  attack  protects  from  subsequent 
invasion. 

7.  Some  of  the  obligate  parasites  are  shared  by  man  with  the 
domestic  animals,  and  it  is  possible,  and  even  probable,  that  in 
some  diseases  they  are  the  most  frequent  source  of  infection. 
The  study  of  the  diseases  of  animals  is  indicated,  and  there  can 
be  little  doubt  that  it  will  be  followed  by  a  diminution  in  the 
number  of  cases  of  those  diseases  which  are  common  to  man  and 
domestic  animals. 

8.  Conditions  which  clinically  seem  to  be  entitled  'to  a  single 
place  in  our  nosological  catalogue  may  not  be  entities  or  identi- 


APPENDIX.  335 

ties,  and  therefore  conflicting  biological  studies  of  parasitic 
findings  in  these  cases  may  be  harmonized  by  a  re-arrangement 
of  our  nomenclature. 

9.  Alarmists  have  nothing  to  fear  in  new  contagious  diseases, 
for  it  is  probable  that  all  unrecognized  obligate  parasites  are 
harmless,  though  perhaps  exquisitely  contagious  or  epidemic. 


YELLOW-FEVER. 

Few  physicians  on  this  continent  have  had  more  experi- 
ence with  yellow-fever  than  Dr.  Wolfred  Nelson,  C.  M.  of 
Quebec.  He  was  for  some  years  a  member  of  the  Board  of 
Health  at  Panama,  where  he  had  ample  opportunities  of 
studying  the  disease  in  its  worst  form,  and  last  year  he  gave 
an  outline  of  his  views  before  the  State  Medical  Society  of 
Arkansas,  which  I  shall  present  to  my  readers.  The  paper 
is  valuable  from  a  practical  point  of  view,  but  also  as  show- 
ing the  errors  that  have  been  committed  by  the  medical 
faculty  and  the  endorsement  of  all  I  have  said  in  preceding 
pages  on  this  terrible  disease. 

Dr.  Nelson,  addressing  the  President  of  the  Society,  said  : 

In  what  follows,  I  shall  refer  to  my  own  experience  of  this 
dread  disease  at  Panama,  on  the  Pacific,  and  Colon,  on  the  At- 
lantic, both  ports  of  the  Isthmus  of  Panama  ;  my  studies  and 
observations  on  the  west  coast  of  Mexico,  where  I  studied  and 
traced  its  epidemics  of  1883  and  1884  ;  my  experience  in  the  hos- 
pitals of  Cuba  ;  and  finally  my  visit  to  Florida,  in  the  fall  of  1887, 
when  I  deliberately  forecast  the  epidemic  that  swept  Jacksonville 
in  1888.  My  letter  of  warning  to  the  people  of  Florida  was 
published  in  the  Times-Union  of  Jacksonville,  November  30, 
1887,  and  was  recalled  when  the  disease  was  upon  them. 

Now,  to  return  to  the  Isthmus  of  Panama,  where  I  lived  and 
practised  from  1880  to  1885.  I  was  back  there  twice  in  1886,  and 
twice  in  1888,  thus,  to  use  an  expressive  phrase,  bringing  my 
knowledge  down  to  date. 

The  yellow-fever  of  the  Isthmus  of  Panama  I  describe  thus : 
It  is  an  acute  infectious  disease,  a  specific  fever,  ordinarily  not 


336  APPENDIX. 

contagious  ;  but  under  certain  atmospheric  conditions,  not  yet 
fully  explained,  the  disease  undoubtedly  develops  contagious 
properties  and  epidemics  result. 

Yellow-fever  is  ushered  in  in  a  variety  of  ways.  It  may  be 
preceded  by  languor  or  malaise.  The  invasion  may  be  abrupt. 
Generally  characterized  by  a  chill,  often  very  severe,  lasting  one, 
two,  or  three  hours  ;  the  duration  of  the  chill  having  a  marked 
significance,  severe  chills  marking  nearly  all  fatal  cases.  Again, 
the  disease  may  be  ushered  in  by  sudden  nausea  and  faintness, 
without  any  warning,  as  in  my  own  case  during  the  Isthmian 
epidemic  of  1880.  Headache  is  always  met  with.  I  know  of  no 
exception  to  this  statement.  Frontal  headache,  a  flushed  face, 
and  gastric  irritability  in  new-comers  within  the  yellow-fever 
zone,  is  always  very  suspicious,  a  fact  specially  referred  to  in  Dr. 
Belot's  admirable  book,  "  La  Fievre  Jaune  a  La  Havane."  Gen- 
erally the  headache  is  frontal  ;  it  may  be  bi-parietal  and  occa- 
sionally occipito-frontal,  but,  to  repeat,  marked  headache  always. 
In  dealing  with  specific  yellow-fever  of  the  Isthmus  of  Panama, 
which,  if  respectability  depends  on  its  antiquity,  is  the  oldest, 
most  respectable,  and  fatal  variety  known — a  history  of  constipa- 
tion obtains  in  nearly  all  cases.  I  can  recall  but  a  single  case  as 
an  exception  to  this  well-known  rule,  and  it  was  a  case  in  my 
practice  where  the  disease  had  been  preceded  by  a  malarial 
diarrhoea.  No  condition  of  health  gives  immunity.  It  aims 
at  all,  be  they  healthy  or  unhealthy.  It  has  a  specific  role.  From 
early  youth  to  advanced  age  it  pursues  its  death-dealing  mission. 
It  is  true  that  the  mortality  among  children  is  less  than  at  puberty 
and  beyond.  Pains  in  the  legs  and  sacral  region,  the  latter  often 
intense  and  agonizing.  I  shall  never  forget  my  own  experience. 
It  seemed  as,if  a  legion  of  fiends  were  trying  to  dig  out — if  I  may 
use  the  expression — my  sacrum  with  red-hot  pincers.  The  pain 
is  excruciating  and  indescribable.  In  the  majority  of  patients, 
the  face  was  red,  just  like  the  face  is  in  scarlet-fever — the  boiled- 
lobster  color.  The  eyes  at  first  were  clear,  providing  that  there 
had  been  no  antecedent  hepatic  disease  ;  later  they  became  suf- 
fused, injected.  The  skin  was  hot  and  dry.  In  many  cases  a 
peculiar  biting  heat  was  felt  (like  the  calormordax  of  pneumonia). 
It  produced  a  strange  sensation,  resembling  a  current  of  electri- 
city playing  over  the  extended  head.  Pulse  hard  and  slow, 


APPENDIX.  337 

varying  from  sixty-five  to  eighty.  Temperature,  first  stage,  100° 
to  103°  ;  where  the  cases  proved  fatal,  in  the  first  stage,  rising  to 
104°,  106°,  and  107°,  the  latter  being  the  highest  temperature 
noted  by  me  in  my  practice  ;  to  fall  slightly  just  before  death.  In 
the  second  stage,  or  "  period  of  calm,"  as  it  is  termed,  it  feels 
a  remission  only.  At  the  beginning  of  the  third  stage,  or  the 
stage  of  "  secondary  fever,"  it  rises  again.  Respiration,  as  one 
would  expect  during  the  "hot  stages,"  is  hurried.  At  times 
a  peculiar  moaning  respiration  of  indescribable  sadness.  It  fills 
the  room  and  the  vicinity.  The  respirations  varied  from  thirty  to 
forty  per  minute,  and  at  the  close  of  the  third  stage  fifty  to  sixty, 
becoming  less  with  the  fall  of  the  temperature  just  before  death. 
Great  thirst,  nothing  appeases  it.  Restlessness,  no  position 
giving  any  ease.  Urine,  at  invasion,  normal  but  high-colored. 
In  the  majority  of  cases  on  the  Isthmus  of  Panama  the  patient 
died  during  the  first  stage,  such  was  the  blood-destroying  inten- 
sity of  the  disease  when  all,  or  nearly  all,  of  the  symptoms 
detailed  and  to  be  detailed,  appeared.  They  do  not  appear  in  any 
stated  order. 

Within  twenty-four  hours  of  invasion  all  the  symptoms  are  in- 
tensified. Sacral  pain  and  headache  increasing  ;  gastric  disturb- 
ance and  epigastric  tenderness  developing  early  in  many  cases, 
the  slightest  pressure  over  the  stomach  causing  intense  pain  and 
eliciting  sharp  cries.  In  cases  where  the  brain  symptoms  were 
very  marked,  in  some  where  patients  were  unconscious,  the 
slightest  pressure  produced  a  contortion  of  the  face  and  body, 
If  deep-seated  pressure  was  made  they  writhed  on  their  beds,  but 
the  instant  that  it  was  removed  they  became  quiet  again.  Next, 
nausea  and  vomiting,  at  first  a  clear  fluid,  well  named  "  white 
vomit "  by  Surgeon-General  Blair,  of  British  Guiana,  South 
America.  Tongue  at  first  slightly  coated.  I  am  dealing  with 
complicated  cases.  In  patients  who  had  suffered  from  intermit- 
tents,  or  bilious  remittents,  what  is  termed  the  characteristic 
tongue  of  yellow-fever  was  not  found.  As  stated  it  was  slightly 
furred,  later  the  fur  increases  from  behind  forward,  the  tips  and 
edges  take  on  a  deep  red.  Gums  also  become  a  fiery  red,  also 
the  mucous  membrane  of  the  mouth  and  throat.  The  whole 
mucous  tract  suffers.  Later,  in.  the  majority  of  cases,  sore  throat 
is  complained  of,  due  to  stripping  of  the  mucous  membrane. 


338  APPENDIX. 


Blood  oozes  from  the  denuded  tongue  and  gums,  giving  an  inde- 
scribable fetor  to  the  breath  ;  at  times  it  collects  on  the  teeth.  In 
some  cases  a  peculiar  and  characteristic  odor  is  exhaled  from  the 
patient's  body.  Once  recognized,  it  never  will  be  forgotten.  It 
somewhat  resembles  Vodeur  du  cadavre  of  French  authors.  The 
late  Dr.  Stone  of  Louisiana  was  the  first  American  writer,  I 
believe,  to  recognize  it.  As  he  states,  it  is  a  very  bad  omen. 

When  patients  die  in  the  first  stage,  the  urine  always  shows 
a  large  amount  of  albumen.  The  temperature  remains  high,  104° 
to  107°  F.  Delirium,  often  quiet,  marks  the  latter  temperature. 
In  some  cases  extending  over  more  time — beyond  the  fourth  or 
fifth  day — the  albumen  does  not  appear  until  the  close  of  the 
seconder  the  beginning  of  the  third  stage.  Albumen  is  a  sine  qua 
non.  I  know  of  no  yellow-fever  without  it,  nor  do  any  of  my 
many  friends  practising  within  the  tropics.  It  never  was  absent 
in  Isthmian  cases.  I  never  have  seen  or  heard  of  a  case  of 
specific  yellow-fever  without  it  ;  never,  either  in  the  practice  of  Dr. 
L.  Girerd,  late  Surgeon-in-Chief  Panama  Canal  Company,  in  that 
of  Dr.  Didier,  of  the  same  service,  or  in  the  cases  seen  by  my 
brother,  the  late  Dr.  George  W.  Nelson,  at  one  time  my  partner, 
and  later  Resident  Surgeon  at  the  Canal  Hospitals,  HuertaGalla, 
Panama,  giving  a  combined  experience  of  hundreds  and  hundreds 
of  cases.  During  an  epidemic  at  Colon,  in  the  fall  of  1883,  it 
swept  the  shipping,  over  one  hundred  and  fifty  cases,  nearly  all 
fatal.  Again  albumen  in  all  cases.  Suppression  of  urine  is  a 
late,  and  generally  among  the  last  symptoms.  Where  it  is 
marked,  they  seldom  recover.  The  bowels,  if  freely  acted  upon 
by  the  sulphate  of  soda,  to  be  referred  to,  may  not  furnish  any 
early  information,  diarrhoeal  motions  produced  by  the  soda  being 
followed  by  "black-vomit  motions"  in  many  fatal  cases.  These 
motions  may  precede  or  follow  black  vomit.  No  rule  is  absolute, 
or  such  material,  well  named,  may  only  be  seen  at  the  autopsy. 
Black  vomit  follows  the  constant  retching  and  the  "  white  vomit " 
of  Blair.  Black  vomit  is  happily  named,  and  shows  innumerable 
fine  particles  or  flocculi  named  black  vomit  or  "  coffee-ground 
vomit,"  or  the  marc  de  caftfoi  the  French  writers,  whose  books  on 
yellow-fever  are  among  the  latest  and  very  best.  Frequently 
patients,  without  the  slightest  warning,  commence  violent  vomit- 
ing. It  pours  forth  from  mouth  and  nostrils,  often  threatening  to 


APPENDIX.  339 

choke  them.  I  have  seen  a  patient  resting  quietly  on  his  back 
after  the  subsidence  of  the  gnawing  sacral  pain,  when  a  perfect 
flood  of  black  vomit  has  spurted  from  his  mouth  and  nostrils  up 
into  the  air,  over  bedding,  mosquito  curtains,  and  the  nurse.  An 
old  and  intelligent  writer  on  yellow-fever,  Dr.  Dowell,  has  been 
singularly  happy  in  his  remark,  that  it  is/<?r  saltum.  So  it  is. 

Here,  I  must  pause  and  divide  my  yellow-fever  cases  into  two 
classes,  and  shall  state  that  such  are  met  on  the  Isthmus  of 
Panama.  One  class  I  took  the  liberty  of  naming  "  uncompli- 
cated," the  other  "cgmplicated."  By  uncomplicated,  I  mean  the 
disease  occurring  in  new-comers.  In  these,  brain  symptoms  and 
delirium  were  common.  Such,  almost  without  the  classic  excep- 
tion, died.  I  never  knew  one  to  recover.  The  possession  of  full 
health  meant  rich  blood  and  a  better  culture-fluid  for  the  germs 
that  destroy  it — the  absolute  destruction  of  the  blood  being  but  a 
matter  of  three  or  four  days.  I  can  best  illustrate  this  by  a  case 
in  the  practice  of  my  valued  friend,  Dr.  L.  Girerd,  to-day  a  retired 
practitioner  living  in  Paris.  In  the  case  referred  to,  on  the  fourth 
day  of  the  disease,  he  failed  to  get  a  single  red  corpuscle  in  the 
blood — not  one.  The  heart  was  driving  a  fluid  through  the  ves- 
sels— one  incapable  of  nourishing  the  brain  tissues.  A  fluid  wholly 
devoid  of  the  life-sustaining  oxygen  carried  by  the  red  corpuscles. 
His  crucial  microscopic  work  revealed  a  fluid,  and  in  it  the  debris 
of  corpuscles  ;  or,  to  use  the  old-time  word  that  I  have  applied 
to  this  condition  in  yellow-fever,  a  necremia,  or  death  of  the 
blood.  His  patient,  a  titled  foreigner,  a  magnificent  specimen  of 
manhood,  who  stood  six  feet  four  inches  in  his  stockings,  died  a 
few  hours  later.  The  "  complicated  "  cases  occurred  in  those 
who  had  been  on  the  Isthmus  from  six  months  to  sixteen  years, 
and  of  course  were  profoundly  malarious.  I  say  of  course,  as  no 
man,  woman,  or  child  there  escapes  intense  paludal  poisoning. 
Sixteen  years  had  failed  to  give  the  so-called  acclimation  to 
an  American,  Captain  Dean.  Specific  yellow-fever  cut  him  off  ; 
he  was  my.  patient.  An  elderly  Italian,  M.  Georgetti,  after 
thirty-seven  years'  residence  at  Panama,  died  of  specific  yellow- 
fever.  I  personally  know  a  French  gentleman  in  Guaymas,  Mexico, 
who  has  spent  over  forty  years  on  both  coasts  of  Mexico.  He 
went  through  epidemic  after  epidemic  unscathed,  but  in  the 
thirty-sixth  year  of  his  residence,  after  .passing  through  the 


34O  APPENDIX. 


Guaymas  epidemic  of  1883,  he  came  down  with  the  disease 
in  1884,  when  a  few  cases  appeared,  as  is  usual  following  all  epi- 
demics within  the  tropics,  and  just  escaped  dying.  He  in  person 
related  his  experience  to  me.  Acclimation  is  only  so-called  ;  it  is  a 
myth,  but  quite  in  keeping  with  a  lot  of  our  gross  ignorance  regard- 
ing yellow-fever.  Nothing,  absolutely  nothing,  protects  against 
specific  yellow-fever,  except  having  had  the  disease,  a  fact  well 
known  to  all  close  students  of  the  disease  within  the  tropics. 

With  this  digression  as  a  preparatory  statement  I  shall  next 
consider  the  second  stage,  or  "  period  of  calm,"  as  it  is  termed. 
There  is  a  marked  fall  of  temperature,  but  merely  a  remission, 
and  most  deceptive  and  dangerous  it  is.  I  can  best  illustrate  this 
by  actual  cases.  In  two  cases,  both  mine,  during  the  epidemic  of 
1880  ;  new  arrivals  ;  just  married  ;  he  a  Frenchman  and  Consul 
for  France  ;  she  a  Portuguese,  aged  seventeen.  They  had  passed 
the  first  stage.  His  temperature  had  run  up  to  106°  F.,  hers  to 
105°  F.  Then  came  the  deceptive  "  period  of  calm  ;  "  they  felt 
so  well  that,  despite  my  emphatic  orders,  they  got  up  and  walked 
about.  He  was  in  one  room  and  she  in  another.  In  the  woman's 
case,  the  secondary  fever  came  on  that  night,  together  with  a 
copious  "vaginal  hemorrhage,"  practically  the  equivalent  of  black 
vomit.  She  died  within  twelve  hours  of  her  walking  about  her 
rooms.  His  temperature  again  ran  up.  He  died  the  next  day. 
She,  poor  girl,  was  laid  out  in  her  wedding  finery.  They  occupy 
a  single  grave  in  the  Foreign  Cemetery  at  Panama.  Such,  gen- 
tlemen, is  malignant  yellow-fever  as  I  know  it. 

As  I  have  stated,  yellow-fever  may  be  a  disease  of  a  single 
"  access  "  or  paroxysm.  When  it  is  so,  the  patient  dies  or  enters 
on  convalescence,  such  being  the  milder  cases  in  Panama.  Thus, 
it  resolves  itself  into  a  sharp,  clearly  defined  fever  of  a  single 
paroxysm,  or  "access,"  as  the  French  so  expressively  term  it. 
As  nearly  all  attacked  died,  the  milder  cases  were  the  exceptions. 
In  the  great  majority  the  "  period  of  calm "  was  deceptive, 
the  slightest  imprudence  on  the  part  of  the  patient  ending  in 
death  later,  the  remission — I  have  seen  the  temperature  as  low  as 
99°  F. — lasting  from  twenty-four  to  thirty-six  hours  ;  in  cases 
marked  by  long  chills,  but  twenty-four  hours  to  merge  into  the 
third  stage  of  the  disease,  or  that  of  "secondary  fev^r."  I  have 
faced  three  epidemics  of  small-pox,  one  at  home  in  Montreal,  and 


APPENDIX. 


341 


two  at  Panama.  The  severe  chills  in  that  disease,  initiating  the 
severe  and  confluent  cases,  the  high  primary  fever,  the  second 
stage,  to  merge  into  the  high  temperature  of  the  secondary  fever, 
consequent  blood  changes,  and  death.  These  cases,  so  familiar 
to  me,  have  caused  much  thinking  in  connection  with  my  studies 
in  yellow-fever  and  its  blood  changes.  In  a  fatal  case  of  conflu- 
ent small-pox  at  Panama,  without  the  slightest  warning,  I  have 
seen  a  fluid  that  to  the  eyes  was  identical  with  black  vomit,  spurt 
from  the  mouth,  high  in  air,  over  every  thing,  staining  the  bed- 
ding just  like  black  vomit ;  it  was  per  saltum.  To  our  life- 
currents  we  must  look  for  information. 

In  the  "  third  stage  "  the  albumen  appears,  that  is,  if  absent  at 
close  of  "period  of  calm,"  it  is  invariably  met  here.  Black 
vomit  and  black- vomit  motions,  suppression  of  urine,  brain  symp- 
toms, etc.,  in  cases  ending  fatally  in  this  stage,  all  the  symptoms, 
crowd  each  other,  and  death  closes  the  scene. 

In  "  uncomplicated  "  cases,  or  where  violent  delirium  may  be 
met,  many  painful  scenes  result.  A  young  Englishman,  the  pic- 
ture of  health,  as  attested  by  his  magnificent  physique  and  rosy 
cheeks,  was  stricken  on  landing.  He  was  my  patient.  The  case 
closed  with  furious  delirium.  Four  men  had  to  take  turns  in 
holding  him,  until  death  closed  one  of  the  saddest  of  sights. 

A  few  remarks  regarding  the  "  fever  of  acclimation  "  of  some 
writers.  This,  mark  you,  is  generally  preceded  by  a  slight  chill, 
a  rapid  pulse,  a  flushed  face,  suffused  eyes,  with  a  trace  of  albu- 
men in  the  urine — in  a  word,  it  is  a  very,  very  mild  form  of  yellow- 
fever,  the  febrile  movement  lasting  twenty-four  to  thirty-six  hours, 
the  mildest  type  of  an  "  access."  Failing  a  trace  of  albumen,  it 
is  not  a  fever  of  acclimation — that  is,  to  a  tropical  physician — 
and  without  the  other  symptoms,  no  subsequent  protection  may 
be  expected.  In  fact,  some  profound  students  of  the  disease 
within  the  tropics  consider  it  but  a  temporary  protection  ;  that 
in  seasons  of  epidemic,  while  such  are  exposed  in  a  lesser  degree 
still  they  are  liable  to  contract  the  severe  type. 

Such,  briefly  told,  is  yellow-fever  on  the  Isthmus  of  Panama. 
1  have  seen  and  attended  it,  in  both  cities,  Colon  and  Panama. 
I  wish  to  add  that  it  and  other  tropical  diseases  have  caused,  at 
a  low  estimate,  fully  twenty  thousand  deaths  on  the  line  of  the 
Panama  Canal.  The  New  York  World,  of  May  18,  1889,  credits 


342  APPENDIX. 


the  French  Consul  at  Colon  with  saying  that  fifteen  thousand 
Frenchmen  have  died.  This  probably  is  a  mistake.  I  believe 
twenty  thousand,  all  told,  will  be  a  generous  estimate.  The 
heaviest  dying  known  to  me  was  in  1884,  during  that  epidemic 
at  Colon,  in  the  shipping  and  on  the  Isthmus.  In  an  article  in 
Harper  s  Weekly,  of  July  4,  1885, 1  placed  the  death-rate  for  that 
month  at  six  hundred  and  fifty-three  officers  and  men  of  the  Canal 
Company.  I  obtained  the  figures  from  an  inside  source.  The 
Canal  Company's  statements,  as  published  in  Le  Bulletin  du  Canal 
Interoceanique,  were  as  mendacious  as  they  were  misleading.  De 
Lesseps'  last  ditch,  that  absurd  creation  of  a  man  in  his  second 
childhood,  has  cost  twenty  thousand  lives,  over  $200,000,000  in 
gold,  has  ruined  hundreds  of  thousands  of  petty  investors  in 
France.  Up  to  the  hour  of  the  crash,  De  Lesseps  in  person, 
while  knowing  the  full  truth,  unblushingly  told  his  fictions. 
Since  1884  he  has  known  the  whole  truth.  He  is  a  wicked  old 
man,  who  should  be  buried  alive  under  his  fictions. 

Many  of  our  confreres  have  fallen  in  the  Isthmus.  Some  noble 
fellows  are  buried  there — yellow-fever,  dysentery,  and  pernicious 
fever.  Yellow-fever  must  be  seen  and  studied  in  its  own  habitats. 
The  Isthmus  is  one  of  the  earliest. 

My  visit  to  Tampa,  in  November,  1887,  impressed  me  in  many 
ways,  but  what  greatly  interested  me  was  to  hear  of  cases  of  non- 
albuminuric yellow-fever.  These  cases  of  so-called  yellow-fever,  I 
believe,  furnish  that  class  of  people  who  have  had  yellow-fever 
two  and  three  times.  As  may  be  inferred,  I  have  no  faith  in  any 
yellow-fever  without  the  invariable  presence  of  albumen  in  the 
urine.  I  have  yet  to  meet  with  or  read  of  a  well-authenticated 
case  of  secondary  yellow-fever.  Nor  do  I  know  a  single  physi- 
cian who  has  seen  one. 

Now  I  come  to  the  subject  of  treatment ;  and  here  I  most  em- 
phatically state  that  yellow-fever  has  no  treatment  properly  so- 
called.  The  host  of  so-called  treatments  justify  my  statement. 
How  can  a  disease,  according  to  the  old  view,  characterized  by 
the  symptoms  described  by  me,  have  one  ?  Four  centuries  seem 
to  have  taught  the  profession  nothing,  or  next  to  it.  All  that  has 
been  known  with  absolute  certainty  is  that  people  got  yellow- 
fever  and  died  ;  the  world  heard  of  the  dying,  and  that  from 
Cuba  it  makes  periodic  invasions  of  the  Sunny  South.  The  treat- 


APPENDIX.  343 

ment  of  yellow-fever  is  purely  symptomatic,  my  early  treatment 
up  to  1884,  and  was  that  of  the  "  Old  School."  May  God  forgive 
it  for  its  ignorance  and  charlatanism  !  Many  authors  have  made 
a  rtchaufft,  or  rehash,  of  the  experience  of  others,  they  never 
having  seen  a  case  themselves.  They  are  responsible  for  much 
ignorance,  //  not  worse.  Having  tried  all  the  so-called  orthodox 
treatments,  I,  previous  to  the  fall  of  1884,  settled  on  the  follow- 
ing :  On  being  called  to  see  a  patient  at  the  outset,  I  played  a 
trump  card  and  made  quinine  the  diagnostic  agent.  We  must 
bear  in  mind  that  a  few  hours  in  such  cases  may  mean  a  life 
saved  or  lost.  The  following  was  the  mixture  : 

5     Quin.  sulph 3  j. 

Acid,  sulph.  dil. ,  B.  Phar 3  ij. 

Sodas  sulph £  j. 

Tinct.  Card,  co 3  ij. 

Aq ad  §  viij. 

Misce  fiat  mistura.     Sig.  :  Take  a  quarter  at  once  and  repeat  in  two  hours. 

This  mixture,  given  French  fashion,  in  potions,  or  portions, 
well  diluted  with  water,  made  a  perfect  solution  and  was  readily 
absorbed.  It  was  my  "  multicharge  gun."  It  gave  me  the  best 
results.  Hot  baths.  Pilocarpine  in  one  case,  aconite,  etc.,  were 
in  order,  to  produce  free  action  of  the  skin.  If  the  cases  were 
purely  malarial,  the  quinine  and  sulphate  of  soda  met  all 
the  indications.  The  sulphate  of  soda  acts  like  a  charm, 
free,  bilious  motions  following.  Every  dose  contained  fifteen 
grains  of  quinine  and  two  drams  of  sulphate  of  soda.  If 
after  two  doses  the  temperature  remained  high,  100°  and  up- 
ward, with  the  usual  symptoms,  yellow-fever  was  the  verdict. 
Valuable  time  had  been  saved  ;  the  bowels  freely  acted  upon,  a 
most  important  indication.  Later,  I  added  to  this  treatment  the 
following  :  A  phosphoric-acid  mixture  every  hour  or  two,  largely 
diluted  with  water  ;  gave  it  and  it  only,  purposely  to  bring  about 
an  acid  condition  of  the  blood.  In  a  few  words  to  make  it 
wholly  uninhabitable  to  the  germs.  I  adopted  this  course  only 
after  serious  thought,  and  said  to  a  medical  friend  :  "  My  next 
patient  with  yellow-fever  gets  well  or  dies  on  phosphoric  acid." 
I  explained  it  to  two  friends,  Dr.  L.  Girerd  and  Dr.  Arthur  Gore, 
who  saw  my  cases  ;  also  to  Dr.  Bransford,  United  States  Navy, 


344  APPENDIX. 


who  crossed  the  Isthmus  on  his  way  to  Nicaragua.  Previous  to 
my  adoption  of  this  purely  acid  treatment,  following  the  quinine- 
and-soda  mixture,  my  patients  kept  on  dying  in  a  way  that  was 
simply  appalling.  Not  that  I  lost  more  than  my  confreres.  Our 
helplessness  dazed  me.  As  stated,  after  mature  deliberation,  I 
settled  on  phosphoric  acid,  well  diluted,  for  life  or  death.  Three 
cases  so  treated,  all  in  succession,  got  well,  an  absolutely  unheard 
of  thing  there.  I  had  friends  see  them,  knowing  as  I  do  what 
unbelief  and  professional  jealousy  will  do.  My  reasoning  was 
sound.  The  acid  did  not  destroy  the  oxygen-bearing  function  of 
the  red  corpuscles,  while  the  germs  of  the  yellow-fever  did,  and 
so  killed  my  patients.  By  rendering  the  blood  acid  these  germs 
could  not  live  and  reproduce.  They  were  destroyed  in  situ  and 
the  blood  ceased  to  be  a  culture-fluid.  Any  student  of  medicine 
familiar  with  bacilli  and  their  cultures,  knows  full  well  that  even 
faintly  acid  solutions  are  fatal  to  the  propagation  of  bacilli.  Such 
was  my  reasoning  as  far  back  as  1884.  I  have  the  notes  on  those 
cases,  taking  full  notes  on  all,  as  I  had  been  taught  to  do  while  a 
student  at  the  Montreal  General  Hospital,  1868-72. 

The  blood  is  the  habitat  of  the  germs  of  yellow-fever.  When 
my  first  case  in  the  series  of  three  demanded  my  attention,  alas  ! 
I  could  not  procure  a  reliable  phosphoric  acid,  when  I  had  to  fall 
back  on  a  formula  published  on  p.  93  "  United  States  Dispen- 
satory," being  that  proposed  by  Mr.  James  T.  Shinn,  American 
Journal  of  Pharmacy,  October,  1880,  thus  :  Liquor  Acidi  Phos- 
phorici.  A  similar  preparation,  under  the  name  of  Horsford's  Acid 
Phosphate,  has  a  large  use  in  this  country.  The  formula  is  as 
follows  :  Liquor  Acidi  Phosphorici  (without  iron)  ;  Calcii  phos- 
phat.,  384  grains  ;  Magnesii  phosphat.,  256  grains ;  Potassii 
phosphat.,  192  grains  ;  Acidi  phosphorici  (60  per  cent.),  640 
minims  ;  Aq.,  q.  s.  to  make  a  pint."  As  stated,  not  being  able  to 
procure  a  reliable  phosphoric  acid,  I  was  forced  to  use  Hors- 
ford's Acid  Phosphate.  It,  as  I  knew,  was  a  standard  prepara- 
tion of  uniform  strength  and  excellence.  I  strongly  object  to 
employing  a  patent  preparation,  so  to  speak.  Its  contents  or 
make-up  was  known,  and  it  was  "  Hobson's  choice."  The  prep- 
aration did  all  that  I  anticipated,  and  I  give  its  formula  as  found 
in  the  "  United  States  Dispensatory."  I  knew  what  I  used.  It 
is  essentially  a  strong  acid  mixture. 


APPENDIX.  345 

To  repeat,  having  given  my  quinine  and  sulphate-of-soda  mix- 
ture, thus  securing  free  motions  from  the  bowels,  the  malarial 
element  being  eliminated  by  the  non-effect  of  the  quinine  ;  I  then 
treated  for  yellow-fever,  thus  :  To  bring  about  free  action  of  the 
hot  and  burning  skin  was  absolutely  necessary.  As  stated  at  first, 
I  tried  hot  baths,  aconite,  etc.,  and  abandoned  them,  using  a 
simpler  and  more  effective  means,  in  a  vapor-bath,  named  in 
Peru  as  "  Dr.  Wilson's  treatment,"  being  that  of  an  English 
physician  who  used  it  with  great  success  during  an  epidemic 
there  in  1854,  and  later.  The  patient  was  placed  on  a  chair — 
one  with  a  wooden  seat — all  clothing  being  removed  ;  he  was 
covered  with  blankets  tucked  in  closely  under  the  chin.  A  spirit- 
lamp  was  lit  and  placed  under  the  chair,  thus  furnishing  heat  and 
vapor.  To  Dr.  Wilson's  vapor-bath  I  added  a  foot-bath,  all  un- 
der the  blankets,  the  water  as  hot  as  the  patient  could  bear  it. 
Finally  I  grafted  on  some  Jamaican  treatment,  giving  a  pint  of 
hot  lemonade  or  orange-leaf  tea.  Under  this  triad,  a  profuse 
perspiration  followed,  usually  within  ten  minutes  ;  it  fairly  ran 
off  them.  As  soon  as  it  was  freely  established  they  felt  better. 
The  scarlet  hue  of  the  face  faded.  The  hard  pulse  became  softer. 
If  the  bath  caused  faintness,  that  was  guarded  against  by  a  shorter 
exposure.  With  this  I  had  no  unpleasant  symptoms,  but  with 
nitrate  of  pilocarpine,  profound  pallor  and  faintness  in  a  well- 
nourished  man  caused  me  alarm.  I  tried  it  in  but  a  single  case, 
and  that  was  previous  to  my  knowing  of  Wilson's  vapor-bath. 
The  necessary  exposure  being  made,  ten  to  fifteen  or  twenty  min- 
utes, the  patient  stood  up,  the  chair  was  slipped  from  below  the 
blankets,  and  he  was  lifted  into  bed  en  masse  to  prevent  any 
escape  of  heat  or  moisture.  More  blankets  were  put  over  him. 
In  some  cases  the  perspiring  lasted  one  or  two  hours,  to  the 
marked  relief  of  the  patient  and  the  lessening  of  all  the  symptoms. 
After  a  variable  time,  the  skin  again  became  hot  and  dry,  when 
the  same  procedure  was  repeated,  as  often  as  necessary.  Thus, 
two  highly  important  indications  were  met  at  the  very  outset. 
First,  under  the  quinine  and  soda,  free  motions  from  the  bowels 
were  secured  ;  remember  the  marked  constipation  in  these  cases, 
often  extending  over  three  or  four  days,  while  the  man  had  been 
eating  as  usual.  Secondly,  full  and  free  action  of  the  skin.  Ac- 
cording to  my  way  of  thinking  and  reasoning,  the  patient  was 


346  APPENDIX. 


placed  under  the  most  favorable  conditions  for  fighting  the  dis- 
ease. Generally  large  quantities  of  fecal  matter  were  voided, 
and  the  pores  were  thoroughly  opened.  Next,  the  rest  of  the 
treatment  was  in  order.  It  was  of  the  simplest.  A  teaspoonful 
of  the  acid  phosphate  in  half  tumbler  of  water,  every  hour  or 
two,  day  and  night,  for  the  first  twenty-four  hours.  It  never 
caused  nausea.  I  continued  it  for  two  or  three  days,  according 
to  temperature  of  patient  and  symptoms.  The  bowels  continued 
to  act  freely — bilious  motions.  Later  they  became  very  dark  under 
the  acid.  Previously  I  had  used  sinapisms  and  a  lot  of  things 
recommended  by  the  books,  and  those  supposed  to  be  experi- 
enced in  treating  the  disease.  The  sinapisms  were  placed  over 
the  stomach  to  try  and  check  the  distressing  vomiting.  At  times 
they  were  beneficial  ;  again  useless.  Diet  in  these  cases  is  a 
matter  of  very  small  importance.  They  were  too  busy  with  the 
disease.  I  fail  to  recall  a  single  case  where  food  of  any  kind  was 
asked  for.  The  highly  irritable  stomach  must  be  remembered. 
Iced  milk  and  beef  broth  in  very  small  quantities,  at  frequent  in- 
tervals, if  the  stomach  tolerates  them.  Iced  lemonade  and  pure 
soda  water.  Small  pieces  of  ice  allowed  to  dissolve  in  the  mouth. 
I  gave  champagne  a  fair  trial,  and  abandoned  it.  I  am  satisfied 
that  the  purely  acid  treatment  is  ample.  The  simpler  the  treat- 
ment the  better.  The  quinine  and  sulphate-of-soda  mixture, 
vapor-baths  a  la  Wilson,  and  the  acid  meet  all  requirements.  I 
abandoned  the  old-time  treatment.  As  I  have  already  informed 
you,  I  had  three  recoveries,  one  after  the  other,  all  in  infected 
premises  where  the  previously  attacked  had  died.  These  recoveries 
were  in  the  fall  of  1884.  Early  in  the  spring  of  1885 — March — I 
left  for  my  annual  holiday,  visiting  Nicaragua,  when  I  returned  to 
the  Isthmus,  to  lesve  it,  April  25th,  for  New  York  City. 

Three  swallows  do  not  make  a  summer,  nor  do  I  claim  that 
three  successive  recoveries  are  every  thing  ;  but  as  nearly  all 
attacked  died,  I  do  earnestly  claim  that  three  successive  cases 
getting  well  furnish  food  for  thought.  Personally  I  am  satisfied 
that  by  persistently  acidulating  the  life-currents  they  ceased  to 
be  blood-heat  culture-fluids  for  the  germs  of  yellow-fever.  I  say 
germs.  The  following  facts,  I  believe,  will  strengthen  my  claim 
that  three  successive  recoveries  were  absolutely  unheard  of  at 
Panama.  A  few  words  regarding  the  dying  from  yellow-fever 


APPENDIX.  347 


thereaway.  I  can  recall  twenty-seven  admissions  to  the  yellow- 
fever  ward  of  the  Canal  Hospitals,  Panama,  with  but  a  single 
recovery.  My  brother,  the  late  Dr.  George  W.  Nelson,  then 
resident  surgeon,  furnished  me  with  the  figures.  Of  forty-two 
cases  sent  to  the  Charity  Hospital,  Panama,  during  the  epidemic 
of  1880,  when  I  had  the  disease,  not  a  single  recovery.  As  a 
concluding  statement,  I  could  amplify  them  to  any  extent — the 
Dingier  expedition.  Mr.  Dingier  and  Mrs.  Dingier,  accompanied 
by  Mr.  and  Miss  Dingier,  and  a  party  of  canal  engineers — all 
told,  a  party  of  thirty-three — arrived  at  Colon  in  October,  1883, 
Mr.  Dingier  being  the  new  Director-General  of  the  canal  works. 
Within  six  weeks  of  landing  Count  de  Cuerno  and  Mr.  Zimmer- 
man were  dead— specific  yellow-fever.  Within  fifteen  months  of 
the  landing  of  that  party  of  thirty-three,  fourteen  had  had  yellow- 
fever,  and  but  one  recovered,  Mr.  Dingier  losing  his  wife,  son, 
and  daughter.  He  was  very  patient,  and  had  been  on  the  Isthmus 
previously.  His  regular  life,  no  doubt,  was  the  factor  that  saved 
him.  Contrast  three  successive  recoveries  with  the  above — my 
cases  were  specific  yellow-fever. 

As  previously  intimated,  yellow-fever  spares  none.  While  it  is 
quite  true  that  total  abstainers  have  been  swept  away  by  it,  it  is 
equally  true  that,  even  in  the  severest  cases,  they  have  recovered, 
where  the  moderate  drinker  was  lost  from  the  start.  Time  and 
again,  my  own  experience  has  confirmed  this.  The  regular  life, 
particularly  within  the  tropics,  is  its  own  reward.  In  "  Ziemssen's 
Enclyclopsedia,"  vol.  ii.,  in  the  article  on  yellow-fever,  much  valua- 
ble information  will  be  found  on  this  very  subject — the  value  of 
total  abstinence.  "  Panama  in  1855,"  Harper  Bros.,  New  York. 
"The  Handbook  of  Panama  Railway,"  1860,  Dr.  Otis,  Harper 
Bros.  Dr.  L.  Girerd's  work  on  "  Panama,"  published  in  1883,  in 
French,  in  Paris.  All  contain  much  information  regarding  that 
land  of  pestilence  and  death,  as  well  as  "  Five  Years  in  Panama," 
1889,  Belford,  Clarke,  &  Co.,  New  York. 

In  reference  to  the  inestimable  benefits  of  total  abstinence 
within  the  tropics,  it  simply  confirms  the  opinion  of  a  valued 
friend  at  Panama,  the  Consul-General  of  the  United  States,  who, 
when  asked,  "  How  do  you  live  in  the  tropics  ? "  wittily  replied  : 
"  It  all  depends  on  the  liver"  So  it  does.  An  alcoholic  liver  in 
yellow-fever  means  death. 


348  APPENDIX. 


The  time  allowed  for  the  reading  of  this  paper  necessitates  my 
leaving  out  much  that  I  should  like  to  discuss.  I  must  ignore  the 
interesting  history  of  the  disease  and  hasten  on. 

A  few  words  or  points  on  the  after-treatment.  The  treatment 
during  convalescence  calls  for  constant  watchfulness.  It  is  here 
that  malarial  symptoms  crop  up  in  the  cases  of  those  who  have 
been  at  Panama  a  few  months.  Dr.  L.  Girerd  examined  the 
blood  of  hundreds  on  arrival,  and  found  it  normal,  in  no  case 
showing  the  malarial  bacillus.  After  the  first  month  he  re- 
examined  scores  of  them  ;  the  blood  of  all  these  showed  it, 
simply  confirming  the  statements  to  be  found  in  Dr.  Tomes' 
work,  "  Panama  in  1855,"  statements  amplified  in  Dr.  L.  Girerd's 
work. 

To  return  to  the  stage  of  convalescence.  I  have  known  a  beef- 
steak to  cause  death  on  the  tenth  day.  During  convalescence 
such  patients  are  simply  ravenous.  Well  do  I  recall  my  own  in- 
tense hunger.  Slops  are  in  order,  fluid  food,  given  at  short  inter- 
vals, not  to  overload  the  stomach.  Its  irritability  lasts  for  weeks 
and  weeks.  Bathing,  a  thorough  washing  of  the  patient's  body 
and  hair  daily  in  a  weak  carbolic  bath,  the  thorough  disinfection 
of  the  patient's  effects  and  room. 

The  majority  of  cases  were  fatal  on  or  before  the  fifth  day, 
closing  with  black  vomit,  suppression  of  the  urine,  etc.  In  such 
patients  it  was  a  fever  of  single  "  access,"  or  paroxysm.  Other 
cases  passed  through  the  "  period  of  calm  "  and  died  in  the  third 
stage,  or  that  of  "  secondary  fever,"  from  the  sixth  to  the  ninth 
day.  Cases  of  a  typhoid  character  were  rare.  I  saw  but  one, 
being  that  of  my  friend  Dr.  Arthur  Gore,  now  in  San  Francisco, 
California. 

The  sequelae  :  Boils,  pimples,  parotid  swellings,  and  intermit- 
tent fever.  Jaundice — It  was  of  a  rich  canary  color.  It  lasted 
a  whole  month.  People  were  never  curious  about  it,  or  anxious 
to  ask  me  questions — not  any. 

Now  for  a  very  brief  reference  to  post-mortem  appearances. 
My  small  experience  under  this  heading  simply  confirms  what 
an  old  and  clear-headed  American  writer  has  stated  :  "  Yellow- 
fever  has  no  pathology."  I  refer  to  Dr.  Grenville  Dowell,  whose 
little  brochure  contains  a  mine  of  information,  or  what  the  great 
French  undertaker,  M.  de  Lesseps,  calls  "  an  arsenal  of  facts." 


APPENDIX.  349 

The  post-mortem  findings  are  so  variable  in  patients  cut  off  by 
the  same  symptoms  that  no  reliance  can  be  placed  upon  them. 
I  deem  it  a  blood  disease,  pure  and  simple,  and  if  my  view  is 
accepted,  absence  of  any  marked  pathological  changes,  save  in 
the  blood  itself,  must  be  expected. 

The  liver  :  It  presented  a  variety  of  conditions.  I  have  found 
it  fatty  ;  again,  fatty  on  section,  showing  an  immense  quantity  of 
oil-globules  ;  again,  perfectly  normal  in  size  and  color.  The 
chamois-colored  liver  is  supposed  to  be  the  characteristic  liver. 
I  never  saw  but  one,  and  it  was  the  only  one  found  in  nearly 
one  hundred  autopsies  made  at  the  Canal  Hospitals,  Panama, 
by  Dr.  S.  Didier,  a  gentleman  profoundly  versed  in  yellow  fever. 
He  was  born  in  one  of  its  habitats,  the  island  of  Martinique, 
French  West  Indies. 

The  kidneys  :  Nothing  constant.  I  met  them  large  and  small  ; 
again,  perfectly  normal  to  the  eye. 

The  stomach  :  This  organ  presented  signs  of  acute  inflamma- 
tion. Generally  its  coats  were  thickened  ;  it  contained  more  or 
less  black  vomit  ;  I  saw  nearly  a  pint  in  one  case  ;  its  inner  sur- 
face showing  innumerable  pink  points  or  foci  of  congestion,  and 
small  deposits  of  blood.  Dr.  Castellanos,  a  physician  to  the 
Charity  Hospital,  Panama,  a  Spaniard,  and  formerly  a  hospital 
surgeon  in  Cuba,  told  me  that  it  was  the  only  constant  condition 
found  by  him,  and  he,  while  there  in  Cuba,  had  made  nearly  one 
hundred  and  fifty  autopsies. 

The  brain  I  never  examined.  Dr.  L.  Didier  found  nothing 
worthy  of  remark  in  his  large  experience.  Nothing. 

The  blood  :  I  always  found  it  in  a  perfectly  fluid  condition. 
Remember  the  destruction  of  the  corpuscles  and  the  great 
amount  of  albumen  eliminated  by  the  kidneys.  Its  specific  gravity, 
taken  by  me  two  hours  after  death,  was  nearly  normal.  To  this 
fluid  we  must  direct  our  whole  attention.  To  repeat,  I  deem  it  a 
blood  disease,  pure  and  simple,  and  have  held  this  view  since 
1884.  Death  in  these  cases  is  due  to  a  true  necraemia.  If  this 
view,  which  I  believe  is  peculiar  to  myself,  be  proven,  we  have 
an  explanation  of  the  majority  of  symptoms  of  yellow  fever,  and, 
as  already  stated,  it  explains  the  absence  of  any  characteristic 
pathological  changes,  save  in  the  blood  itself. 

The  brain  symptoms  are  due  purely  and  simply  to  the  destine- 


350  APPENDIX. 


tion  of  our  oxygen  carriers,  the  red  corpuscles.  The  great  Vir- 
chow  attributes  loss  of  consciousness  to  their  failure  to  carry 
oxygen.  By  rendering  the  blood  uninhabitable  to  the  germs 
that  prey  upon  and  destroy  the  corpuscles,  we  triumph.  Much 
remains  to  be  explained  about  yellow-fever.  Many  honest  and 
patient  toilers  are  at  work  on  this  great  problem.  I  believe  that 
with  the  discovery  of  the  specific  germ  by  Dr.  Domingo  Freire, 
of  Rio  de  Janeiro,  Brazil  ;  by  Dr.  L.  Girerd,  at  Panama,  and  its 
discovery  by  Dr.  Carlos  Findlay,  in  Havana  ;  to  his  and  the  work 
of  his  friend, 'Dr.  Delgado,  of  that  city  ;  add  to  this  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  truly  wonderful  strides  made  by  these  gentlemen  in 
their  bacteriological  studies  and  inoculations  ;  to  the  above,  by 
acidulating  the  blood,  as  I  have  done,  where  it  has  invaded  the 
system  :  with  such  factors  the  future  seems  full  of  hope  to  me. 
May  it  prove  so.  Having  digressed,  I  must  get  back  to  faz  post- 
mortem findings. 

The  bladder  :  Generally  a  few  drachms  of  highly  albuminous 
urine  were  found.  Remember  the  suppression. 

Black  vomit  has  a  peculiar  odor,  and  is  slightly  acid  to  the 
taste.  To  clear  up  a  vexed  point  in  my  mind,  I  collected  some 
in  one  of  my  cases  and  tasted  it.  It  required  a  little  courage, 
but  I  was  in  earnest  and  working  for  results.  I  may  state,  inter 
alia,  that  it  will  never  compete  favorably  with  other  beverages. 
The  "vomit,"  on  settling,  deposits  coffee-ground  "particles,"  the 
fluid  above  being  the  color  of  weak  black  tea.  Black  vomit  is 
not  bilious  vomit.  I  tasted  it  to  clear  up  this  very  point.  Black 
vomit,  as  a  symptom,  is  of  grave  import.  It  indicates  advanced 
blood-changes,  the  beginning  of  the  necraemia.  While  at  Panama 
I  sent  friends  specimens  of  my  late  patients.  My  rooms  were 
miniature  graveyards.  Some  "black  vomit"  sent  to  my  old 
classmate,  Dr.  William  Osier,  then  Professor  of  Clinical  Medicine 
in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  with  other  material,  furnished 
pabulum  for  a  lecture  on  "  Vomited  Matters."  To-day  he  is  Pro- 
fessor of  Practice  of  Medicine  in  the  Johns  Hopkins  University, 
Baltimore,  Md.,  and  Physician-in-Chief  to  the  magnificent  hospi- 
tal of  the  same  name. 

To  recapitulate  :  Now  that  Drs.  Freire,  Girerd,  Findlay,  and 
Delgado  have  found  the  same  germ,  Dr.  Domingo  Freire  being 
the  first  investigator  and  its  discoverer,  to  him  the  honor  and 


APPENDIX.  351 


credit  are  due.  He  caused  others  to  work.  Now  that  this  has 
been  accomplished,  I  firmly  believe  a  new  era  is  at  hand,  and 
that  soon  this  constant  reproach  to  our  profession  and  much- 
vaunted  modern  civilization,  the  sway  of  yellow-fever,  is  about  to 
receive  its  coup  fie  grdce.  Inoculation  will  protect  man  against 
this  awful  disease  as  vaccine  does  against  small-pox.  Dr.  L. 
Girerd  proved  his  good  faith  in  such  a  vaccine,  if  the  term  is 
permissible,  by  making  attenuated  cultures  of  the  microbes  of 
specific  yellow-fever,  and  by  inoculating  himself ;  and  without 
carrying  it  to  the  full  protective  influence,  he  allowed  himself  to 
be  bitten  by  mosquitoes  (Dr.  Carlos  Findlay's  discovery)  that  had 
been  feeding  on  a  man  in  the  yellow-fever  ward  of  the  Canal 
Hospital,  a  case  of  specific  yellow-fever  ;  the  fifth  day  the  mos- 
quitoes were  disturbed  and  allowed  to  bite  him.  The  result  was 
a  mild  yellow-fever.  I  translated  his  report,  and  it  was  pub- 
lished in  the  Canada  Medical  Record,  Montreal,  in  the  fall  of 
1886,  together  with  an  editorial. 


DOES   SALTING   MEAT   DESTROY   MICROBES? 

Professor  J.  Forster  of  Amsterdam  has  published  ( Weekbladv. 
Niederland  Tijdschrift  v.  Geneeskunde)  an  account  of  some  inves- 
tigations made  in  his  laboratory  by  himself  and  Herr  de  Freytag, 
having  for  their  object  the  determination  of  the  effect  of  the 
common  process  of  salting  or  pickling  meat  on  various  forms  of 
bacteria.  It  was  found  that  cholera  bacilli  were  soon  destroyed 
under  the  influence  of  abundance  of  salt,  usually  in  a  few  hours  ; 
but  that  typhoid  bacilli,  pyogenic  staphylococci,  the  streptococci 
of  erysipelas,  and  the  bacilli  of  porcine  infectious  diseases  fre- 
quently retained  their  vitality  for  several  weeks,  or  even  months, 
in  spite  of  the  presence  of  abundance  of  salt.  The  same  was 
also  true  of  the  bacilli  of  tubercle.  In  some  cases  these  bacilli 
were  found  alive  after  being  two  months  in  pickle,  their  vitality 
being  proved  by  their  capacity  for  infecting  new  cultures.  Por- 
tions of  the  viscera  of  a  tuberculous  animal,  preserved  for  a  con- 
siderable time  in  salt,  were  found  capable  of  causing  tuberculosis 
in  a  healthy  animal  when  introduced  into  its  peritoneal  cavity. 
Experiments  on  the  spleen  of  an  animal  which  had  died  of  malig- 


352  APPENDIX. 


nant  anthrax  showed  that  salt  possessed  the  power  of  destroying 
the  bacilli  of  this  disease  in  about  eighteen  hours.  These,  as 
well  as  cholera  bacilli,  were  found  to  require  seven  and  one  half 
per  cent,  of  salt  to  destroy  them.  From  these  facts  it  would 
appear  that  salting  or  pickling  has  but  little  destructive  effect  on 
many  of  the  more  common  forms  of  bacilli  liable  to  be  found  in 
diseased  meat. 

AN   ESSAY   ON   INFLUENZA   FROM   INDIA. 

A  Baboo  in  India  applied  to  a  gentleman  for  an  appoint- 
ment worth  not  more  than  a  trifle  of  twenty-five  rupees 
a  month,  and  as  a  proof  of  his  qualification  for  the  position 
he  was  required  to  write  an  essay  on  influenza.  A  copy  of 
his  composition  reaches  me  as  these  pages  are  in  the  printer's 
hands  and  it  will  be  found  of  interest  in  more  ways  than  one. 
It  reads  thus : 

"  Sir, — As  I  am  requested  by  your  honour  to  write  an  essay  on 
influenza,  all  I  can  say  is  that  this  Infernal  Epidemic,  which  has 
fallen  on  our  mother  country  like  a  great  calamity,  is  caused  by 
the  concentrated  efforts  of  minute  bacus  of  the  animalculae  tribe 
of  unforeseen  microscopical  animal  life.  Like  the  old  plagues  of 
Egypt,  it  is  deteriorating  in  the  extreme,  carrying  its  venomous 
degenerating  contamination  through  every  household  families, 
not  excepting  your  humble  servant,  who  has  suffered  too  much 
the  details  of  fever  in  its  augmented  state  with  a  pertinacity  that 
would  have  done  the  heart  of  Euscapalius  good  to  have  inter- 
vieud.  Notwithstanding,  nevertheless,  I  am  now  all  square,  your 
honour,  enjoying  salubrity  of  heath  hence  my  ability  to  write  this 
hard  subject  matter.  Although  this  infernal,  inhuman  disease,  is 
not  dangerous  except  for  the  old  decrepid  one  foot  in  the  grave 
sort  of  paralytic  people,  yet  is  frought  with  too  great  after  conse- 
quences, such  as  Pneumonia,  Bronchitis,  Catarrh,  et  hoc  genus 
omne  (you  see  I  am  versed  in  few  Latin  terms)  causing  thereby 
some  care  to  be  taken  with  ourselves  afterwards.  It  is  great 
great  pity  your  honour  asked  me  to  write  such  kind  of  great 
difficult,  inexperienced  task,  no  B.A.,  I  am  sure,  would  be  spritely 
enough  to  attempt  to  undertake  such  eccentric  task  without  pur- 


APPENDIX.  353 


loining  his  intellectual  faculties  to  the  utmost  tension.  Your 
honour  will  kindly  excuse  my  writing  to  a  greater  length,  although 
I  could  give  much  information  on  the  statistic  of  this  great  and 
downfelling  disease  on  bed  with  all  items  of  fever  and  nose  run- 
ning all  day  and  night  my  wife  is  still  suffering,  but  I  am  earn- 
estly working  the  oracle  with  the  Gods  to  minimise  the  malady  by 
giving  alms  and  all  things  to  poor  helpless  beggars  asking  much, 
from  your  humble  servant  who  is  at  present  greatly  impecunious 
from  want  of  job,  two  children  besides  wife  and  myself  to  feed 
and  one  more  child  coming  soon  yet  unborn  owing  to  wife's 
fault.  Hoping  to  be  favoured  by  your  kind  consideration." 


THE   EDUCATIONAL  POVERTY   OF   PHYSICIANS. 

The  remarks  that  I  found  it  necessary  to  make  in  the 
earlier  pages  on  this  subject  present  nothing  more  than  the 
opinions  of  the  best  members  of  the  medical  profession.  It 
is  admitted  on  all  sides  thiat  young  men  are  given  the  degree 
of  M.D.  who  are  utterly  incompetent  to  practise  medicine. 
Many  of  them  are  deficient  in  all  the  qualities  that  go  to 
make  a  gentleman,  and  if  there  be  any  occupation  where 
these  qualities  are  essential,  it  surely  is  in  the  man  who  as 
physician  or  surgeon  has  access  to  our  homes  and  is  en- 
trusted with  the  inmost  secrets  of  the  family.  The  majority 
of  those  who  gain  admission  at  the  medical  schools  are  also 
sadly  deficient  in  the  groundwork  of  even  an  ordinary  educa- 
tion. They  have  little  or  no  classical  knowledge,  although 
that  is  of  the  utmost  importance,  and  their  general  informa- 
tion is  of  the  scantiest  and  most  superficial  kind.  As  a 
necessary  consequence  of  this  their  minds  are  narrowed, 
their  realm  of  thought  is  restricted,  and  much  of  their  think- 
ing is  perfunctory.  They  go  forth  into  the  world  when  they 
receive  their  diploma  not  only  unfit  to  be  entrusted  with  the 
delicate  and  responsible  duties  of  a  physician,  but  unqualified 
even  to  be  granted  permission  to  begin  the  study  of  it.  Very 
few  of  them  can  write  a  prescription  accurately,  and  scarcely 
any  know  enough  of  the  effects  of  drugs  and  of  their  reactions 
23 


354  APPENDIX. 


when  combined  to  be  able  to  prepare  a  formula  that  is  un- 
questionable. Their  experience  in  compounding  medicine  is 
generally  nil. 

In  cities  the  pharmacist  often  saves  a  patient  from  serious 
consequences  of  the  doctor's  incapacity,  and  in  the  country, 
practitioners,  cognizant  of  their  own  ignorance,  fall  back 
upon  proprietary  combinations  rather  than  risk  the — to  them 
hazardous — experiment  of  devising  one  of  their  own.  It  is 
difficult  to  take  up  a  medical  paper  and  not  find  examples  of 
badly  written  prescriptions.  It  is  fully  as  difficult  to-  find 
one  that  is  properly  written ;  and  as  a  result  of  this  ineffi- 
ciency the  country  pharmacist  has  to  keep  a  large  stock  of 
proprietary  preparations  and  have  an  otherwise  unnecessary 
amount  of  capital  lying  idle.  To  the  inadequate  education 
of  physicians  much  mortality  is  due,  and  also  much  of  the 
inefficient  treatment  of  disease.  For  this  reason  it  has  come 
within  my  province  to  refer  to  it,  but  I  do  not  care  to  have 
the  charge  rest  entirely  on  my  own  authority.  Evidence  of 
the  truth  of  what  I  say  is  so  abundant  that  it  can  be  found 
everywhere  and  every  day,  but  I  can  do  no  more  than  adduce 
a  few  illustrations. 

In  one  instance  a  dram  of  morphine  was  ordered  in  a  pre- 
scription. The  druggist  very  properly  referred  it  back  to 
the  doctor  before  dispensing  it.  He  then  learned  that  instead 
of  a  dram  a  grain  was  intended,  but  the  physician,  a  young 
man,  did  not  know  how  to  write  it. 

Here  is  a  literal  copy  of  a  prescription  that  was  ordered  in 
1888  in  a  town  in  Connecticut: 

"  Sulphur §  ii. 

Quicksilver 5  ss- 

Cream  tartar |  i. 

Nit.  potassa §  ss. 

Molasses 1  viii. 

Take  one  tablespoonful  before  going  to  bed." 

The  following,  especially  ordered  to  be  put  in  a  two-ounce 
bottle,  is  from  Laramie  City : 


APPENDIX.  355 


"  Potass,  iodidi 5  ss. 

Sodii:  carbonat 3  vi. 

Sodii  salicylat J  j. 

Aquae  q.  s ad. .  |  ii." 

The  doctor  who  wrote  that  thought  the  solids  occupy  no 
space  and  would  remain  in  solution ! 

In  another  instance  the  physician  wanted  a  certain  number 
of  drops  of  a  tincture  to  be  used,  so  he  wrote  "  gtt  ivc,"  but 
how  many  drops  were  intended  is  unknown. 

This  is  from  Connecticut : 

"  Potass,  of  chlorate |  i. 

Glycerine 5  i- 

Tinct.  of  iron  sesquiklor. . |  iii." 

The  following  are  also  from  New  England  : 

"  Tinct.  Hullim §  ii.  . 

Teaspoonful  before  meals." 

' '  Q     Tinct.  Rudullis two  drams. 

Teaspoonful  every  three  hours." 

"  3     Acid  nitric,  strong. 

Glycerine of  each  one  ounce. 

To  be  used  externally." 

Similar  examples  are  to  be  found  in  every  druggist's  pre- 
scription book,  but  I  need  not  multiply  them. 

Referring  to  the  number  of  medical  graduates  who  have 
appeared  before  the  Virginia  Medical  Board,  Dr.  Wood 
writes  in  the  Therapeutic  Gazette  as  follows  : 

"  From  1877  to  1887,  inclusive,  36,097  graduates  from  medical 
colleges  have  entered  practice  in  the  United  States.  If  these  had 
all  been  efficiently  examined  according  to  the  results  just  given, 
8,300  would  have  been  rejected,  or  about  one  fourth  the  number. 
Our  own  opinion  is  that  this  proportion  of  rejections  is  less  than 
it  ought  to  be.  We  have  gone  over  the  class-books  of  the  Medi- 
cal Department  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  and  find  that 
one  third  of.  those  who  entered  that  institution  failed  to  get  their 


356  APPENDIX. 


degree.  Practically,  all  of  these  people  graduate  at  one  college 
or  another,  and  our  own  belief  is  that  at  least  twenty  per  cent, 
more  go  through  the  university  examination  than  ought  to.  Can 
any  one  estimate  the  amount  of  damage  that  nearly  nine  thousand 
improperly  educated  doctors  can  do  in  ten  years  ?  " 

In  the  Medical  News  of  November  last  year  there  appeared 
the  following  article,  which  is  both  instructive  and  suggestive. 
I  quote  it  in  full  but  it  needs  no  comment : 

"  At  the  present  time,  when  the  power  of  evil  legislation  seems 
to  have  the  upper  hand,  and  the  endeavors  of  the  regular  profes- 
sion to  obtain  a  State  Medical  Examining  Board  have  been 
thwarted  in  the  State  of  Pennsylvania  by  certain  opponents  of 
professional  high  standing,  the  following  abstract  from  the  Brook- 
lyn Medical  Journal  may  carry  to  the  public  a  sufficient  idea  of 
the  frightful  dangers  which  they  allow  to  exist  under  the  present 
law.  It  is  very  easy  for  a  man,  as  brutally  ignorant  as  some  of 
these  men  seem  to  have  been,  to  mistake  the  symptoms  resulting 
from  one  of  their  poisonous  doses  for  evidences  of  disease,  and 
in  this  way  to  fail  absolutely  to  attempt  to  remedy  the  evil  which 
their  criminal  negligence  has  brought  about. 

"  The  Virginia  Board  of  Medical  Examiners  received  the  fol- 
lowing answers  to  questions  put  to  graduates  of  medical  colleges, 
who,  under  the  Virginia  law,  applied  for  licenses  to  practise 
medicine  in  that  State  : 

"  Describe  the  larynx.  Ans.  The  larynx  is  composed  of  carti- 
lage. The  oesophagus  passes  through  the  larynx. 

"  What  is  the  function  of  the  liver  ?     Ans.  Do  not  know. 

"  Give  tests  for  arsenic.  Ans.  Sulphuretted  hydrogen  is  one. 
Don't  know  rest. 

"  Give  test  for  mercury.     Ans.  Do  not  remember. 

"  Give  dose  of  tartar  emetic.     Ans.  Ten  grains. 

"  Give  dose  of  sulphate  of  atropia.  Ans.  Hypodermatically  (sic) 
ten  grains  ;  by  mouth  sixty  grains. 

"  Give  dose  of  corrosive  sublimate.     Ans.  One  grain. 

"  How  would  you  treat  placenta  prsevia  ?  Ans.  I  don't  know 
what  it  is. 

"  Give  dose  of  powdered  cantharides.     Ans.  Forty  grains. 


APPENDIX.  357 


"  What  is  the  source  of  iodine  ?  Am.  It  is  dug  out  of  the 
earth  in  blocks  like  iron. 

"  Describe  dengue  or  break-bone  fever.  Ans.  By  four  appli- 
cants :  A  fever  that  comes  on  soon  after  the  bones  are  broken. 
By  one  applicant  :  The  patient  should  be  cautioned  against 
moving,  for  fear  the  bones  should  break. 

"  Describe  the  peritoneum.  Ans.  It  is  a  serous  membrane 
lining  the  belly  and  extending  into  the  chest,  covering  the  heart 
and  lungs. 

"  Anatomical  ignorance  is  bad  enough,  but  the  ignorance  of 
doses  of  powerful  drugs  is  terrible  in  its  results. 

"  It  is  hardly  necessary  for  us  to  point  out  that  the  doses  of 
atropine  here  given  are  sufficient  in  the  one  case  to  poison  over 
twenty  men,  and  in  the  other  instance  to  kill,  perhaps,  over  one 
hundred  adults.  The  proper  punishment  for  the  man  who  would 
order  forty  grains  of  cantharides  would  be  the  administration  of 
the  drug  in  consecutive  divided  doses,  lest  the  one  should  kill 
him  too  soon. 

"  For  every  candidate  applying  for  the  right  to  practise  medi- 
cine in  the  State  of  Virginia,  where  the  people  are  intelligent 
enough  to  protect  themselves,  fifty  similar  and  worse  dealers  in 
human  lives  enter  this  and  other  States,  where  no  examination 
frightens  them  away  ;  and  it  is  worthy  of  remark  that  the  candi- 
dates in  Virginia  were  not  only  ignorant  of  medicine,  but  were 
ignorant  enough  of  their  own  mental  state  to  dare  the  terrors  of 
an  examination.  The  provision  of  a  State  Medical  Examining 
Board  is  not  a  measure  to  be  engineered  through  the  Legislature 
by  the  medical  profession.  It  possesses  far  less  importance  to 
us  than  to  the  laity,  for  one  doctor  can  generally  grasp  the  calibre 
of  another  and  protect  himself.  It  is  the  people  who  suffer  in 
silence,  instead  of  protesting  against  such  fearful  homicidal  prac- 
titioners. To-day  the  writer  of  this  editorial  read  of  a  case 
where  ergot  was  given  in  the  early  part  of  the  second  stage  of 
labor,  and  yesterday  he  heard  of  a  woman  killed  by  a  great,  burly 
brute  who  was  ignorant  of  the  most  simple  form  of  obstetrical 
procedure.  Yet  with  the  perversity  of  human  nature,  the  apothe- 
cary who  dispenses  poisons  must  be  examined,  and  the  man  who 
orders  the  poison  prescription  goes  unendorsed.  Two  means  of 
remedying  this  crying  evil  are  possible.  The  first,  is  to  prevent 


APPENDIX. 


the  entrance  of  the  money-grasping  igaoramus  into  the  sacred 
guardianship  of  life,  home,  and  family.  The  other  is  for  the 
laity  to  inform  themselves  of  the  standing  of  surrounding  medi- 
cal schools,  and  refuse  to  recognize  the  degree  of  an  institution 
turning  out  unqualified  men  or  of  one  of  which  they  know  noth- 
ing. When  the  people  become  educated  well  enough  to  know 
when  their  wives,  children,  and  those  dearest  to  them  are  killed 
because  of  the  employment  of  a  miserable  charlatan,  then,  and 
not  till  then,  apparently,  will  an  effort  be  made  to  prevent  this 
'  yearly  sacrifice.' " 

Ex  uno  disce  amnes.  The  above  is  but  an  example  of  ex- 
aminations that  occur  in  every  medical  school  in  this  coun- 
try, and  the  greater  is  the  misfortune. 


A  DOCTOR'S  CRITICISM. 

Fair  and  reasonable  criticism  of  all  new  remedies  must  be 
expected.  It  is  a  duty  which  physicians  owe  to  the  public. 
Directly  any  new  agent  is  offered  to  the  profession,  with  cer- 
tain properties  alleged  to  it,  a  careful  test  of  its  value  should 
be  made.  This  can  only  be  done  by  means  of  its  adminis- 
tration and  carefully  noting  its  effects.  If  it  prove  to  be  all 
that  was  promised  for  it  the  community  will  benefit  by  its 
retention  and  use.  If  it  turn  out  worthless  it  should  be  laid 
aside  and  forgotten. 

Examinations  of  this  kind  must  be  made,  however,  by 
persons  qualified  by  education  and  experience.  Several 
valuable  agents  have  been  introduced,  such  as  cocaine,  anti- 
pyrine,  salicine  and  others,  which  through  the  ill-advised  ex- 
ploiting of  the  newspapers  have  fallen  into  popular  use,  and 
dangerous  and  sometimes  fatal  results  have  followed.  That 
is  quite  a  different  thing  from  tests  made  by  competent  per- 
sons and  under  proper  conditions. 

When  my  discovery  was  first  put  before  the  public  I  fully 
expected  that  the  Microbe  Killer  would  be  made  no  excep- 
tion to  the  general  practice  of  the  medical  profession.  I 
solicited  investigation.  I  courted  inquiry,  and  wished  phy. 


APPENDIX.  359 


sicians  to  test  its  merits  in  a  legitimate  way,  and  I  was  pre- 
pared to  abide  by  their  judgment  as  well  as  my  own  experi- 
ments. Many  physicians  did  test  it,  and  they  were  just  and 
honorable  in  expressing  themselves  candidly  on  the  value  of 
the  medicine.  But,  as  I  have  in  a  former  part  of  this  book 
shown,  some  of  my  critics  did  not  act  with  as  much  fairness. 
They  who  opposed  me  in  Texas  did  not  offer  gratuitous  op- 
position. They  were  not  without  some  personal  motive,  and 
I  cannot  lay  all  that  to  the  charge  of  the  doctors  as  a  body. 
It  was  reserved  for  a  New  York  physician  to  attempt  against 
me  the  most  uncalled-for  act  of  injustice. 

Some  twenty  years  ago,  or  it  may  be  less,  one  Dr.  Newton, 
now  dead,  originated  a  small  paper  which  he'  called  The 
Druggists  Circular  and  Chemical  Gazette.  He  left  his  inter- 
est to  a  young  lad,  who,  having  neither  the  capacity  nor  the 
inclination  to  maintain  it,  soon  sold  his  property  to  others, 
and  since  then  the  paper  has  been  characterized  by  some 
peculiarities.  It  depends  largely  upon  its  advertising 
patronage,  and  to  its  advertisers  it  evinces  marked  politeness. 
I  am  not  one  of  its  advertisers. 

A  frequent  contributor  to  the  columns  of  The  Druggists' 
Circular  is  a  person  named  R.  G.  Eccles,  an  M.D.,  I  believe, 
of  Long  Island  College  Hospital, 'a  small  medical  institution 
in  King's  County.  That  gentleman  is  probably  employed  by 
the  paper,  and  a  part  of  his  duty  seems  to  be  to  supply 
articles  for  publication  on  new  remedies.  In  those  articles  I 
have  not  met  with  one  that  was  favorable  to  the  subject  of 
it,  nor  have.  I  seen  among  the  subjects  any  that  were  adver- 
tisers in  the  columns  of  The  Druggists  Circular.  On  one 
occasion  Dr.  Eccles'  production  worked  to  the  public  ad- 
vantage, and  if  he  were  actuated  by  more  discretion  and 
impartiality  he  would  probably  not  have  fallen  into  some  of 
the  errors  that  seem  to  lie  at  his  door. 

In  September  last  year  Dr.  Eccles  undertook  to  test  the 
Microbe  Killer,  not  as  a  physician  should  do  by  noting  its 
effects  upon  the  human  system,  but  by  sitting  down  in  his 
own  room  and  examining.it.  Although  such  a  method  is 


360  APPENDIX. 


manifestly  insufficient,  and  one  upon  which  it  would  be 
worse  than  unjust  to  found  a  judgment  either  of  praise  or 
condemnation,  the  public  for  whose  benefit  such  examinations 
are  supposed  to  be  made  might  be  willing  to  take  it  for  what 
it  is  worth.  They  would  certainly  do  this  if  they  found  the 
examiner  was  impartial.  They  would  even  overlook  any 
incompetency  that  might  be  evinced  if  there  were  at  the  bot- 
tom a  genuine  spirit  of  fairness  and  a  desire  to  get  at  the 
truth.  It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  these  motives  are  not 
apparent  in  the  alleged  inquiry  which  Dr.  Eccles  made  the 
basis  of  an  article  in  his  paper,  wherein  his  zeal  for  his  em- 
ployers got  the  better  of  his  judgment,  and  he  allowed  him- 
self to  use"  language  which,  to  say  the  least,  was  neither 
accurate  nor  moderate. 

Dr.  Eccles  puts  forth  pretensions,  if  I  am  correctly  informed, 
to  being  besides  a  doctor  of  medicine  an  analytical  chemist. 
He  was  not  likely  to  risk  his  reputation,  for  presumably  he 
considers  it  of  some  value,  by  writing  a  detailed  description 
of  a  new  remedy  without  having  by  close  analysis  deter- 
mined its  composition.  And  this  is  what  he  said  as  a  result 
of  that  examination  : 

If  the  reader  will  mix  the  following  together  he  will  have  a  pro- 
duct identical  with  Radam's  wonderful  "  Microbe  Killer  "  (No.  i, 
there  being  four  strengths)  at  a  cost  of  less  than  five  cents  per 
gallon  : 

Oil  of  vitriol  (impure) 4  drams. 

Muriatic  acid  (impure) i  dram. 

Red  wine,  about i  ounce. 

Well  or  spring  water i  gallon. 

Now  before  I  proceed  farther  I  wish  to  say  that  the 
Microbe  Killer  is  prepared  with  none  of  the  ingredients  that 
Dr.  Eccles  names,  and  if  he  be,  as  he  says  he  is,  a  practical 
chemist  it  is  marvellous  how  he  arrived  at  the  result  which 
caused  him  to  make  such  a  statement — if  he  did  arrive  at  it. 
For  to  my  thinking  it  has  much  more  the  appearance  of 
guesswork  than  of  science.  To  strengthen  my  statement  on 
this  point  the  following  affidavit  is  on  record. 


APPENDIX.  361 


STATE  OF  NEW  YOKK, 

CITY  AND  COUNTY  OF  NEW  YORK. 

William  Radam,  being  duly  sworn,  says,  I  am  the  inventor  of 
the  Microbe  Killer.  I  have  never  bought  nor  used  one  dollar's 
worth  of  sulphuric  or  muriatic  acid  to  make  my  Microbe  Killer, 
nor  have  I  given  the  formula  referred  to  to  my  companies  now 
manufacturing  this  preparation. 

WILLIAM  RADAM. 
Subscribed  and  sworn  before  me 

this  24th  day  of  December,  1889. 
N.  R.  COTTMAN, 

Notary  Public. 

Thus  from  Dr.  Eccles'  own  statement  it  is  apparent  that 
he  does  not  know  the  composition  of  my  discovery,  yet  in  his 
ignorance  he  goes  on  to  condemn  it,  and  in  his  overmuch 
zeal  he  attacks  me  personally,  and  uses  language  which  is  as 
unwarranted  as  it  is  vulgar.  I  do  not  propose  to  imitate  his 
style  of  vituperation,  but  must  follow  up  his  observations  for 
the  information  of  the  public. 

He  sneers  at  my  knowledge  of  botany  and  plant  life,  at 
my  love  of  Nature  and  her  operations,  and  at  my  not  being  a 
physician.  This  I  can  pass  almost  without  notice.  Pasteur 
is  not  a  physician.  Many  persons  who  by  their  inventive 
genius  have  contributed  largely  to  the  progress  of  surgery  are 
not  surgeons.  It  would,  however,  be  well  if  American  physi- 
cians knew  more  of  botany  and  Nature's  laws  than  they  do, 
for  that  subject  is  not  a  part  of  their  curriculum,  and  very 
few  of  them  are  acquainted  with  the  sources  whence  many  of 
the  agents  that  they  use  on  their  prescriptions  are  derived. 
A  medical  graduate  of  a  foreign  university  told  me  that  he 
once  asked  a  doctor  of  medicine  of  a  prominent  American 
school  something  about  the  plant  that  produces  aloes.  He 
found  him  absolutely  ignorant  of  the  subject,  and  was  so 
astonished  that  as  opportunity  offered  he  repeated  his 
inquiry  until  he  had  catechised  twenty  physicians.  Not  one 
of  them  could  tell  him  any  thing  about  it.  In  the  face  of 
facts  like  that  it  comes  with  ill  grace  from  an  "  alumnus  "  of 


362  APPENDIX. 


such  a  school  as  the  Long  Island  College  to  utter  expletives 
against  a  man  who  happens  to  know  more  about  plants  than 
the  average  physician,  even  though  the  doctor  is  dependent 
on  them  for  the  most  important  articles  in  the  Materia 
Medica. 

Taking  his  stand  on  the  blunder  that  I  make  the  Microbe 
Killer  with  sulphuric  and  muriatic  acids,  Dr.  Eccles  goes  on 
to  show  the  danger  of  those  things.  He  says  : 

Sulphuric  acid  or  oil  of  vitriol  is  a  slow  but  certain  cumulative 
poison.  The  kidneys  are  unable  to  excrete  it,  and  after  absorp- 
tion from  the  stomach  into  the  blood  it  has  to  return  back  to  the 
alimentary  tract  lower  down,  and  pass  off  with  the  faeces.  Stille", 
in  his  "  Therapeutics  and  Materia  Medica,"  vol.  i.,  p.  301,  says 
of  it : . 

"  By  habitual  use  this  acid  becomes  very  injurious  to  the  teeth, 
even  when  greatly  diluted  ;  it  whitens  them,  indeed,  but  also  cor- 
rodes them.  It  also,  sooner  or  later,  enfeebles  the  digestion,  pro- 
duces colicky  pains  and  diarrhoea,  and  impairs  nutrition. 
Marasmus,  and  even  death,  may  be  the  ultimate  result  of  its  use." 

I  cordially  endorse  all  this.  Sulphuric  acid  is  a  poison,  and 
for  that  very  reason  I  object  to  the  doctors  using  it  as  they 
do.  I  have  shown  before  that  most  of  the  agents  used  in  the 
practice  of  medicine  are  powerful  poisons,  and  therefore 
objectionable.  The  Microbe  Killer  contains  no  such 
ingredients. 

Dr.  Eccles  next  admits  that  physicians  know  that  they 
have  no  remedy  that  kills  microbes,  and  he  rashly  ventures 
the  assertion  that  the  "  hope  of  ever  discovering  a  universal 
microbe  killer,  harmless  to  man,  is  positively  ridiculous." 
Fifty  years  ago  it  would  have  seemed  equally  ridiculous  to 
such  men  as  Dr.  Eccles  appears  to  be,  to  think  of  sending 
messages  across  the  Atlantic  in  an  hour ;  nevertheless,  the 
observatories  of  Montreal  and  Greenwich  can  communicate 
with  each  other  in  three  quarters  of  a  second.  It  is  rash 
to  prophesy  nowadays,  even  for  persons  of  far  higher 
capacity  than  the  doctor.  But  he  is  not  content  with 


APPENDIX.  363 


prophesying.     He  lets  his  notion  carry  him  so  far  that  he 
plunges  presently  into  the  following  funny  sermon : 

It  is,  he  says,  a  common  delusion  of  the  ignorant  that  the 
word  microbe  applies  to  one  common  thing,  whereas  it  is 
a  general  name  for  many  things,  just  as  is  the  word  beast. 
Lions,  tigers,  dogs,  horses,  hyenas,  rabbits,  deer,  and  camels 
are  all  beasts.  What  will  kill  one  may  not  kill  another.  What, 
however,  will  kill  twenty  unrelated  kinds  is  pretty  sure  not 
only  to  kill  all  beasts,  but  all  humans  into  the  bargain.  As  the 
conditions  of  microbe  existence  are  far  more  varied  than  that  of 
beasts,  the  hope  of  ever  discovering  a  universal  microbe  killer, 
harmless  to  man,  is  positively  ridiculous.  There  are  microbes 
that  thrive  in  dilute  acids  as  their  natural  home.  These  are 
destroyed  by  dilute  alkalies.  There  are  others  that  thrive  in 
dilute  alkalies,  but  perish  in  dilute  acids.  Every  conceivable 
condition,  where  life  is  at  all  possible,  has  been  made  the  favorite 
home  of  some  kind.  Some  can  stand  more  heat  than  man,  while 
others  can  endure  greater  cold.  Some  live  in  water,  some  in  air, 
and  some  on  the  surface  of  the  water.  Liquids  of  every  kind  have 
been  invaded  by  them,  and  their  conditions  of  life  adapted  to  the 
same.  The  most  appropriate  conditions  for  the  survival  and  pro- 
pagation of  one  kind  prove  destructive  to  many  others.  There 
are  some  that  would  be  totally  unable  to  thrive  in  the  intestinal 
tract  of  man,  but  which  would  propagate  rapidly  therein  after 
taking  "  Radam's  Microbe  Killer  "  a  couple  of  days.  A  universal 
microbe  killer  would  necessarily  be  a  universal  life  destroyer. 
Long  before  the  strength  could  be  reached  of  heat  or  cold,  elec- 
tricity or  chemical  agents,  capable  of  destroying  all  microbes, 
the  preparation  would  surely  destroy  the  life  of  man.  Their 
adaptations  to  unfavorable  conditions  transcend  ours  in  every 
known  way,  because  we  are  but  one  kind,  and  they  a  multitude  of 
kinds.  Our  range  of  life  singly  transcends  any  of  theirs. 

Such  a  diatribe  as  that  shows  the  need  there  must  be  for 
this  book.  Mr.  Eccles  must  read  it.  He  will  learn  from 
it  much  about  microbes  that  he  evidently  does  not  know 
now.  It  is  indeed  surprising  that  a  physician,  and  one  who 
wishes  to  be  considered  as  a  little  more  than  a  physician, 


364  APPENDIX. 


should  have  made  such  an  exposure  of  his  own  lack  of  in- 
formation. He  terms  me  a  quack  ;  he  declares  that  I  am 
ignorant,  and  he  uses  other  arguments  (?)  of  like  kind  to  sus- 
tain himself.  I  am  content  to  let  any  impartial,  competent 
person  read  this  book,  and  then  the  above  quotation  from 
Dr.  Eccles'  article,  and  let  him  decide  whether  the  epithets 
mentioned  are  more  applicable  to  Dr.  Eccles  or  to  me. 

Having  of  his  own  action  thus  succeeded  in  showing,  first, 
that  he  is  altogether  mistaken  about  the  composition  of  the 
Microbe  Killer,  and  that  in  truth  he  does  not  know  what  it 
is  ;  and,  secondly,  his  deficiency  in  knowledge  concerning 
micro-organic  life,  he  has  the  astounding  audacity  to  go  on  in 
this  most  amusing  fashion  : 

Radam's  claim  is  simply  laughable  to  all  who  know  the  nature 
of  microbes.  If  the  man  had  ever  known  anything  about  the 
subject,  so  lamentable  an  aberration  of  mind  would  be  clear  proof 
of  insanity,  but  in  this  ca'se,  reasoning  without  knowledge  is  at  the 
bottom  of  the  trouble. 

This  pleasant  assumption  by  Mr.  Eccles  that  he  knows  the 
nature  of  microbes  is  particulary  ludicrous  after  reading  his 
own  testimony  to  the  contrary,  and  I  scarcely  thirik  it  worth 
while  to  contend  with  him  as  to  his  assertion  of  my  ignorance 
since  this  book  speaks  for  me  as  well  as  for  itself.  If  Dr. 
Eccles  had  ever  learned  what  the  Microbe  Killer  really  is,  and 
if  he  had  tested  its  properties  and  found  it  wanting,  he  would 
not  have  seen  the  necessity  of  seeking  to  prejudice  it  by 
making  personal  attacks  upon  me.  It  may,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, have  been  the  only  expedient  open  to  him,  but  it 
was  a  wretchedly  bad  one  ;  for  it  proves  nothing  except  the 
worthlessness  of  his  own  case. 

Dr.  Eccles  is  an  utter  stranger  to  me.  His  attack  upon  me 
was  wanton  and  unwarranted.  Unless  the  fact  that  I  do  not 
advertise  in  The  Druggists  Circular  can  be  accounted  a  crime 
against  me,  I  have  never  offended  either  him  or  his  employ- 
ers. He  may  have  been  only  obeying  orders  when  he  made 


APPENDIX.  365 


his  personal  assault  upon  me  in  print.  Of  that  I  know  noth- 
ing, and  it  is  a  matter  of  perfect  indifference  to  me.  But  I 
have  a  right  to  protest  against  his  action  and  his  methods  too, 
and  I  present  them  and  the  gentleman  himself  to  the  public 
as  an  illustration  of  the  means  and  the  men  that  have  been 
employed  to  turn  the  attention  of  the  people  into  wrong 
channels.  They  have  failed,  it  is  true,  but  their  failure  was 
due  to  my  rectitude,  not  to  the  weakness  of  their  efforts. 

The  work  of  Dr.  Eccles  is  not  without  its  value  when  seen 
in  this  light.  As  a  chemist  and  a  physician  he  began  his  in- 
vestigation of  the  Microbe  Killer  evidently  predetermined  to 
condemn  it.  It  was  probably  not  his  wish  to  be  impartial. 
A  just  weighing  of  the  merits  of  my  discovery  would  per- 
haps not  have  suited  the  purpose  of  the  conductors  of  The 
Druggists  Circular.  So  if  he  had  been  actuated  by  an  over- 
powering spirit  of  justice  he  probably  would  not  have  under- 
taken the  alleged  investigation.  He  had  orders  to  curse,  and 
he  dared  not  bless ;  at  any  rate,  that  is  the  most  plausible 
explanation  I  can  find  of  his  conduct.  He  therefore  began 
by  declaring  that  the  Microbe  Killer  is  something  which  it 
is  not.  On  that  false  assumption  he  proceeded  to  tell  us  that 
the  things  he  himself  suggested,  not  the  ingredients  of  the 
medicine,  recollect,  were  poisonous  ;  and  he  probably  trusted 
to  the  inadvertence  or  the  ignorance  of  his  readers  not  to 
detect  the  trick.  It  was  unfortunate  for  him  that  he  did  not 
withhold  the  evidence  of  his  own  want  of  knowledge  of 
microbes,  but  it  was  a  happy  slip  for  me,  since  it  pointed  to 
the  small  value  of  any  opinion  that  he  could  found  on  his 
own  knowledge.  He  has,  however,  furnished  a  fair  average 
example  of  the  way  in  which  attacks  upon  any  new  discovery 
that  is  in  the  shape  of  an  innovation,  are  made.  He  illus- 
trates in  his  own  person  the  kind  of  men  who  are  engaged  to 
make  them.  He  shows  how  little  reliance  should  be  placed 
upon  them  when  they  appear  under  the  circumstances  and 
conditions  that  exist  in  this  instance.  And  he  demonstrates 
the  too  common  trust  in  popular  ignorance  of  a  certain  class 
of  operators  to  have  their  assertions  believed. 


366  APPENDIX. 


My  own  experience  in  the  world  has  led  me  to  a  sense  of 
confidence  in  the  fairness  and  intelligence  of  the  public.  I 
am  assured  in  my  own  mind  that  even  if  such  attacks  as  that 
made  by  Dr.  Eccles  upon  myself  gain  credence  for  awhile 
they  are  cast  to  the  winds  by  popular  opinion  directly  their 
true  character  is  exposed.  If  they  serve  to  create  a  sensation 
for  the  moment,  their  permanent  value  is  found  in  the  addi- 
tional strength  that  comes  to  the  reputation  of  a  discovery 
when  they  are  proved  to  fail.  It  is  not  by  such  efforts  as 
those  of  Dr.  Eccles  that  the  public  is  deceived, — and  if  they 
have  any  effect  at  all  it  is  in  a  direction  diametrically  opposite 
to  that  which  was  intended. 


INDEX. 


Adults,    treatment    of    with   microbe 

killer,  148 

All  disease  cured  by  microbe  killer,  1 79 
Animals  and  Plants,  relations  of,  80 
Antiseptics  and  poisons,  60,  86 
Attacks  on  the  microbe  killer,  113 
Attacks  on  W.  Radam,  205 

Bacillus  of  tubercle,    how    conveyed, 

175 

Baldness,  caused  by  microbes,  177 
Blood  in  yellow  fever,  123 

Cancer,  case  of,  126 
Case  of  a  lady  at  Austin,  156,  161 
Case  of  a  lady  at  San  Francisco,  157 
Case  of  M.  C.  Battey,  163 
Children,  treatment  of,  143 
Chronic  disease,  133 
Consumption  curable,  166 
Cooking,  importance  of,  174 
Corn-stalk  disease,  7 
Creasote  in  tubercle,  173 
Cures,  how  effected,  138 

Death  only  a  name,  4 
Demands  for  microbe  killer,  104 
Diphtheria  in  New  England,  25 
Disease  is  fermentative,  no 
Diseases  of  man  and  other  animals,  9 
Doctor's  remedies  for  tubercle,  176 

Early  days  of  the  microbe  killer,  106 
Easy  application  of  microbe  killer,  155 


Effects  of  climate  on  microbes,  13 

Effects  of  light,  15 

Effects  of  microbes  on  nature,  20 

Emperor  Frederick,  124 

Enquiries  by  the  French  Academy  of 
Medicine,  171 

Errors  of  medical  education  in  Amer- 
ica, 63 

Experiences,  personal,  69 

Experimenting  on  plants,  81 

Experiments,  continued,  90 

External  application  of  microbe  killer, 
131,  145 

Factories  established,  109 
Failure  of  medical  science,  54 
Fermentation  and  putrefaction,  147 
Fermentation  in  the  stomach,  89 
First  patients,  94 

Florida,  dangerous  to  consumptive  pa- 
tients, 171 

Florida,  unhealthiness  of,  50 
Food  of  fungi,  78 
Food  of  plants,  78 
Fungi,  nature  of,  219 

Garden  at  Austin,  Texas,  97 

Healing  not  curing,  156 
Heredity,  41 

History  of  my  own  sickness,  70 
Hot  air  in  consumption,  176 
How  I  discovered  the  microbe  killer, 
75 


367 


368 


INDEX. 


Indestructibility  of  matter,  5 

Inoculation,  39 

Italian  laws  about  consumption,  169 

James  Kavanaugh,  case  of,  189 
Kissing,  danger  of,  35 

"  La  Grippe,"  doctor's  treatment  of, 

213 

"  La  Grippe,"  history  of,  208 
Leprosy  a  common  disease,  184 
Leprosy  and  consumption  compared, 

2OI 
Leprosy  and  the  microbe  killer,  182, 

189 

Leprosy,  contagion  of,  183 
Leprosy  in  Louisiana,  194 
Leprosy,  inoculation  for,  34 
Leprosy,  inoculation  of  a  prisoner,  187 
Letter  from  a  lady  at  San  Francisco, 

160 

Letter  from  J.  Kavanaugh,  196 
Letter  from  M.  C.  Battey,  164 
Letter  from  Portland,  131 
Lichens,  description  of,  79 
Life,  adapted  to  conditions,  19 
Luxury,  effects  of,  69 

Maltreatment    for    yellow    fever    in 

Florida,  121 
Marriage  affinities,  43 
Medical  swindlers  in  New  York,  178, 

229 

Microbe  killer  as  a  prophylactic,  228 
Microbe  killer,  development  of,  86 
Microbe  killer,  how  to  use  it,  198 
Microbe  killer  in  diseases  of  women, 

149 

Microbe  killer,  nature  of,  145 
Microbe  killer,  qualities  requisite,  88 
Microbe  of  diphtheria,  16 
Microbe  of  influenza,  28 
Microbe  of  pneumonia,  14 
Microbe  of  yellow  fever,  47 
Microbes  affected  by  seasons,  132 


Microbes,  are  they  animal  or  vegetable  ? 

219 
Microbes,   does  heat  or  cold  destroy 

them?  225 

Microbes,  effects  of  medicines  on,  222 
Microbes,  habitat  of,  46 
Microbes,  how  taken  into  the  system, 

32 

Microbes  in  food,  10 
Microbes  in  milk,  32,  37 
Microbes  in  summer  diarrhoea,  36 
Microbes  in  tetanus,  18 
Microbes  in  the  atmosphere,  10 
Microbes  in  the  body,  7 
Microbes  in  the  soil,  17 
Microbes  in  tubercle,  172 
Microbes  of  cholera  and  intermittent 

fever,  29,  47 
Microbes  of  malaria,  30 
Microbes,  origin  of,  12 
Microbes,  pedigree  of,  216 
Microbes,  universality  of,  24,  40,  141 
Microbes,  vitality  of,  26 
Mortality  in  the  United  States,  172 
My  discovery  unusual,  137 
My  troubles,  112 

Nature  as  an  instructor,  2 
Nature's  action  unceasing,  4 
Nature's  laws,  dangers  of  neglecting, 

67" 

Nature's  methods,  53 
Necessity  of  mental  labor,  3 

Obelisk  in  Central  Park,  21 
One  medicine  for  all  disease,  107 
Organic  life,  primitive  forms  of,  217 
Origin  of  organisms,  6,  217 

Paid  de  foie  gras,  174 

Phthisis,  spread  of,  204 

Physicians  poorly  educated,  62 

Plants,  functions  of,  78 

Pneumonia  on  the  Croton  Aqueduct, 

28 

Practice  better  than  theory,  58 
Precautions  in  the  sick-room,  175 


INDEX. 


369 


Rapid   spread  of    the   microbe   killer, 

1 20 
Refusal    of    doctors    to    test    microbe 

killer,  121 

Relief  is  not  cure,  152 
Reward  of  $100,  no 

Sargasso,  79 

Schemes  of  the  enemy,  115 
Scientific  surgery,  84 
Sickness,  cause  of,  23 
Status  of  the  doctors,  1 36 
Successes  and  sacrifices,  98 
Sunlight,  effect  of,  51 
Surgeons  necessary,  153 


Tubercle  curable,  166 
Tubercle  in  town  and  country,  173 
Typhoid  at  Yale,  27 
Typhoid  in  New  England,  25 

Value  of  time  in  treating  disease,  107 

Water,  filtration  of,  26 

What  constitutes  a  good  surgeon,  130 

Where  Radam  and  the  doctors  differ, 

222 
Whooping-cough  and  diphtheria,  1 5 

Yellow  fever  in  Florida,  120 


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